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Evaluate how approaches to managing people differ and how these differences can be explained by cultural context.”
Introduction

In this international age of business where firms operate in many different parts of the globe, it is important to note that approaches to management may differ across cultures. In setting up a new office in, for example, China or Japan, potential managers should seek to adapt to the different cultural practices of the host country in order to better manage their workforce and achieve productivity.

In this essay, we shall, firstly, discuss methods of measuring key dimensions of culture, and then using said dimensions, look at the different management styles between three countries; China, Japan and the US, currently the three largest economies in terms of GDP, and seek to determine how each approach is shaped by the unique cultural contexts of each country.

Measuring Key Dimensions of Culture

In order to measure the potential effects of culture on the behaviour of said culture’s firms and managers, Geert Hofstede (2001), while working for IBM in the late 70s and early 80s, identified six key dimensions of culture that could be measured through use of survey data and indexed values, namely;

Time Orientation (Long Term vs Short Term); a measure of the extent to which each society values history, heritage and tradition – whether it prefers to uphold traditional values and is more resistant to new ideas and technology (Long Term Orientation) or whether it is more fluid, less focussed on the past and more open to change (Short Term Orientation);

Power Distance (High vs Low), which measures how well the society in question handles uneven distributions of power; whether it is generally accepted and understood as a fact of life (high power distance) or whether it is held to be deeply unfair, unnatural, and something to be railed against (low power distance);

Individualism vs Collectivism; a measure of the extent to which a sense of community and collective responsibility exists, and whether it is thought to be more important than individualist beliefs and desires. Individualist societies tend to value independence, privacy and personal fulfilment, while collectivist societies tend to value group interdependence and a repression of personal ambition when it is misaligned with communal values;

Uncertainty Avoidance (Weak vs Strong), which measures the extent to which each society is comfortable dealing with risk, uncertainty and ambiguity –societies with high degrees of uncertainty avoidance tend to be highly regulated and value careful planning and structure, while societies with low degrees of uncertainty avoidance tend to be more pragmatic, and accept change and risk as factors of life;

Masculinity vs Femininity; a measure of societal gender differentiation – in ‘masculine’ cultures, gender roles are highly differentiated and society as a whole places higher values on competition, ambition, and personal achievement whereas in ‘feminine’ societies gender roles are less starkly defined and more equal, and society tends to place higher values on relationship building, modesty and group harmony (Hofstede and Minkov, 2010).

The US

American society traditionally has a tendency to value individualism and personal freedoms – indeed, such ideals can be seen in the idea of ‘The American Dream’, which postulates that anyone can achieve great wealth and success through individual hard work and determination. With regard to the Hofstede (2001) dimensions of cultural influence;

Source: Gallant (2013)

The United States scores low on the measure of Power Distance, suggesting that American culture is generally intolerant of uneven distributions of power and prefers to see all men as equal (as is laid out in the American Declaration of Independence). It also scores low on Time Orientation, suggesting US society prefers to embrace change and adapt to new ideas rather than sticking to more traditional approaches. It scores quite highly on Masculinity vs Femininity, which is perhaps a reflection of the traditional American respect for competition and ambition. Unsurprisingly, it scores very highly in the measure of Individualism vs Collectivism, a reflection of the deeply held belief in individual freedoms and independence which has been a mainstay of American culture since the war of independence.

This strong sense of individualism is reflected in the American approach to management. Generally, American managers are expected to deal with employees as individuals, rather than as a collective – the ‘open door’ approach to management, where employees are free to approach and discuss issues, suggestions and ideas with upper management, is a uniquely American approach to management that has gained traction in other parts of the world (Laurent, 2006) as it allows employees to feel that their ideas and opinions are valued by those higher up the corporate ladder. American managers are often viewed as facilitators, helping employees to develop personal talents and understanding the individual strengths and weaknesses of those they oversee (Lewis, 2000). Indeed, many American employers use psychometric tests in their hiring process, to determine an applicant’s individual skill level and expected role within the team (Jenkins, 2001). Indeed, skill-based human resource management theories and practices have quickly gained traction in many American firms (Lawler, 1992), reflecting the US cultural practice of embracing new ideas and valuing individual contributions.

There is also a strong sense of competition prevalent in the American approach to management, with promotions tending to go to those who have been seen to ‘rise above the rest’, rather than merely to those who have had the longest tenure (Morris and Pinnington, 2012). The study by Morris and Pinnington (2012) shows that many US manufacturing firms (around a third of those studied, including several of the largest) have an “up-or-out” approach to employee promotion, whereby if an employee has not risen to the next level of the career ladder by a specified time, they are asked to leave the firm. A study by Gibbons and Waldman (1999) shows that workers in US firms who receive promotions early in their career tend to then be promoted quickly to the next level again, suggesting that individual achievement and ambition is both recognised and rewarded.

China

Chinese society is highly influenced by the teachings of Confucius, where all relationships are seen as inherently unequal; both elders and superiors are to be automatically given the utmost respect, and where the group is held to be far more important than the individual (Yum, 2009). This emphasis on group cohesion over individual freedoms was further influenced by the advent of Chinese communism in 1949, and the formation of the People’s Republic of China. While China has become decidedly less socialist economically over the past two decades, owing mainly to Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms of 1978 and 1992, it still remains a communist country, and its socialist ideology is still highly prevalent in everyday life (Yum, 2009)

With regard to the Hofstede (2001) dimensions of cultural influence;

Source: Gallant (2013)

China scores highly on the measure of Power Distance, reflecting the fact that Chinese society inherently accepts uneven power distribution and inequality as a fact of life. Unsurprisingly, China scores very low on the measure of Individualism vs Collectivism, given both the Confucianist and the ruling Communist Party’s emphasis on obedience to the state and group cohesion. It scores relatively highly on the measure of Masculinity vs Femininity, suggesting that gender roles are fairly strictly defined, and that ambition and assertiveness are valued, although mainly when they are used for the benefit of the group/state. China scores very highly on Time Orientation, suggesting that Chinese culture is very traditional and conservative, placing great emphasis on traditional values and methods. They also score very low on Uncertainty Avoidance, suggesting that Chinese society generally does not tolerate uncertainty, and prefers rules and strict structures to be in place.

This can be seen in the fact that Chinese organisations tend to be highly structured and hierarchical, with each individual having a strict distinct role within the organisation (Lewis, 2000). Chinese managers tend to be very autocratic, and most decision-making is made from the top-down with little consultation (Gallant, 2013). Chinese decision making tends to be highly directive, task-oriented and low in cognitive complexity, with little room for interpretation (Martinson and Davison, 2005). Senior managers often have close ties to the Communist Party, and often important business decisions – especially those related to international trade – are scrutinised by party officials before being made (Osland, 1990).

Chinese society emphasises the need for social cohesion, and the avoidance of conflict. Lockett (1988) suggests that the Chinese approach to management is much more people and relationship-oriented, and less performance-driven than in the West. When it comes to promotion, managers tend to promote those who are seen to be trustworthy and reliable rather than those who have sought to ‘rise above the rest’ at the expense of others (which is seen to be harmful to group cohesion), and length of tenure is also a highly important factor in determining promotion prospects (Ding et al, 1997).

Japan

Japanese society in general emphasises politeness and modesty as key virtues to be upheld – in a country with one of the highest urban population densities in the world, such virtues are important in maintaining social cohesion (Clammer, 2011). Japan was essentially closed to the outside world, apart from occasional contact with Dutch traders, until 1854, when the US Navy forced it to open its borders to trade (Totman, 2005). Since then, it has established itself as the third largest economy in the world in terms of GDP, behind the US and China at first and second place, respectively.

With regard to the Hofstede dimensions of cultural influence;

Source: Gallant (2013)

Japan scores low on the measure of Individualism vs Collectivism, suggesting that Japanese society values group cohesion and social relationships over individual desires and accomplishments. Japan scores very highly on the measure of Masculinity vs Femininity, suggesting a high emphasis on fixed gender roles and on competition. It also scores very highly on Uncertainty Avoidance suggesting a high importance placed on the value of structure and rule formation, which can be interpreted as a holdover of its imperial past and its emphasis on a strict social hierarchy (Benedict, 1967). This is unsurprising given the high score for the measure of Time Orientation, which demonstrates Japanese culture is generally rather traditionalist and conservative.

Although Japan scores low on the measure of individualism, Japanese managers tend to invest a great deal in their employees’ skills and development – in many Japanese firms, new employees spend around six to twelve months in training in each division of the company, so they can understand the different aspects of the firm’s organisation (Gallant, 2013). This ties in to the Japanese emphasis on structure and collectivism – each employee knows their role, and understands the role others play in the firm’s activities. Japanese decision making tends to be very collaborative – the Japanese concept of ‘hourenshou’ captures this perfectly. It refers to the necessity of reporting on both your own work and that of others, in ensuring everyone involved in the process is kept informed on how each piece of work is progressing (Clammer, 2011). Often, decisions are made at the middle management level, after consulting with subordinates, and are then passed up the chain to upper-level management to implement. Top management is seen as more of a facilitator than as a strictly authoritarian body. This idea of group responsibility is also upheld in the Japanese concept of ‘genchi genbutsu’ which translates roughly as the need to get one’s hands dirty when one spots a problem, regardless of role or level. Thus, top-level management are often willing to pitch in on a project to help it succeed, even if said project is many levels below (Clammer, 2011).

The Japanese approach to promotion emphasises both seniority, maintenance of group cohesion, and modesty – the higher a manager rises, the more modest and unassuming he needs to appear (Suzuki, 1986). In Japan, it is generally expected for an employee to spend his working life at one company, slowly developing their individual skills and moving up the ranks, reflecting both the Japanese cultural preference for strong structure and organisation and avoidance of ambiguity, and in Japanese society’s preferred long-term approach to Time Orientation.

Conclusion

While links can be drawn between each country’s unique cultural dimensions and its approach to management, care should be taken when applying such knowledge. As with any sweeping generalisations, there are many exceptions to the rule. However, such generalisations can still be useful – as Lewis (2000) notes, “Determining national characteristics is treading a minefield of inaccurate assessment and surprising exception…there is, however, such a thing as a national norm” (Lewis, 2000, p3). So while not every Japanese manager will be modest, self-effacing and open to collaborative decision making; or every Chinese manager autocratic and avoiding of conflict; or every American manager highly competitive and performance-focused; such archetypes are generally successful in each area of cultural context, and the conscientiousness manager would do well to keep these national differences in mind while dealing with one of the aforementioned nations.

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This work was produced by one of our professional writers as a learning aid to help you with your studies

In the first instance is necessary to define both employee participation as well as what is meant by performance. Employee participation may be defined as the process by which employees are involved in the decision making process of a business rather than merely being expect to following instructions (Times 2009) and as such this forms what is referred to in HR as empowerment. Performance on the other hand can be considered from two perspectives, firstly there is the performance of the individual in question and how their personal performance is affected by the concept of employee participation. Secondly there is the performance of the organisation as a whole to consider and how this will change with varying degrees of employee participation. As such the essay will analyse performance from these two perspectives before drawing a conclusion as to the perceived benefits for both parties.

Approaches to employee participation:

Traditional views of the organisation and approaches to management have seen a clear distinction between the tasks of managers and those of the grass roots level employee. Advocates of this view such F W Taylor (1911) and others within the scientific management school of thought sought to increase productivity and thus performance by deskilling the workforce and breaking tasks down into the most minuet component jobs so as to take advantage of specialisation of labour. The policies implemented by such advocates may be seen as the exact opposite of those who support the theory of employee participation as the scientific school of management sought to centralise power and control into the hands of managers rather than devolve it to the workforce. From a performance perspective the introduction of scientific management techniques saw significant dividends yielded to those who employed them for instance production at the Bethlehem steelworks was maintained with a reduction of labour from 500 to 140 (ACCEL 2009) meaning that performance per employee had increased significantly. However these early developments in management theory previous to the conception of employee participation should not be used to discredit the theory due to a number of special considerations. In the first instance such theories were applied to manufacturing operations and heavy industry and whilst these operations still form a large part of the economy today there has since been a large shift towards service industries requiring differing management styles and techniques. In addition at least part of the success of the scientific management may be associated with the technological developments of the day such as the introduction of the production line as highlighted by Ford’s success at the River Rouge plant in Detroit.

At the other end of the scale the “self-directed work team” as defined by (Williams 1995) may be seen as the ultimate exercise in employee participation and has been implemented by companies such as 3M. Under this system teams are essentially left to fulfil the role of both the managers and employees of an operation with a significant input in production techniques, scheduling and improvement initiatives. Advocates of this approach to employee engagement highlight that were the theory has been put into practise productivity has increased between 30 and 50% (IIE 1996). However on the other side of the spectrum such a high level of employee engagement may have negative consequences including lack of strategic focus as individual teams become ever more productive in their own areas of expertise but forget to consider how their individual team fits into the wider context. The lack of direct leadership can also be seen as providing an opportunity for accountability to be lost and thus falling performance, Bruce (2005) indicates that it is often the accountability of a leader which drives the particular individual to spur on a team or group to the successful completion of a task. Finally as indicated by Robbins (2003) teams have a tendency to “self-reinforce” behaviour, were the general attitude of a self-directing work team is generally positive this will increase the performance of both individuals and the organisation as a whole. On the other hand were the initial attitude and performance of the team is poor in the first instance and with no intervention from outside this can lead to a downward spiral of performance both for the individual and the team as a whole.

However not all approaches to employee participation may be seen as quite so radical in their nature. A more frequent approach may be seen as involving employees to a greater degree without taking such a radical devolvement of control as in the self-directing work team approach. For instance Toyota may be seen as one of the leading companies in developing employee participation, Toyota’s commitment to employee participation goes so far as to be formally a part of the company’s code of conduct (Toyota 2006). Strategies which may be seen as falling under the umbrella of employee engagement pursued by such companies include Kaizen the practise of including employees in quality improvement initiatives such as quality circles and other forms of consultation directly related to their area of work (Shimizu 2009).

Potential benefits:

One must now go on to identify the general potential benefits of employee participation both to the employee and the organisation. One of the key arguments for employee participation is that a every organisation contains a significant amount of knowledge, information and know how that is often present in grass roots level employees as much as in those occupying management positions (Adair 1989 p32-34). By encouraging employees to participate in the decision making process advocates argue that the organisation performs better as it is now making decisions based upon a much wider range of knowledge that would have been unavailable if decisions were solely made at the management level. As such the process of involving employees in the decision making process may be seen as to a large extent associated with the function of communications. Good communications are by definition a two way process (McLaren 2000 p3) which encompasses not only the sending and receiving of messages down a hierarchy but also the sending and receiving of messages back up the hierarchy and in horizontal communications. Despite the benefits of such employee participation which may be attributed to the need for an effective communication channel commentators such as Leigh (2009 p15-29) indicate that organisations are often relatively poor at the embracing the two way nature of communications leading to poor listening skills at an organisational level and thus a missed opportunity for improved performance.

Another potential area for increased performance at the organisational level is that of reduced costs owing to lower labour turnover. As to the question of whether or not employee participation helps to reduce labour turnover is a debating point and depends which school of management thought is applied. On the one hand the classical schools of management theory such as those of F W Taylor would suggest that employee participation is not the most important factor in labour turnover since the most important factor in maintaining staff loyalty was how much money they earned. On the other hand others such as Maslow argued that people do not go to work simply to earn money as in the Taylorite model but that there are several other reasons which are can be seen in the pyramid of needs:

Under Maslow’s theory employees are not simply motivated by the need to earn money which represents only the first and possibly second stages of the pyramid. Maslow also highlights the fact that people after securing the basic needs which are provided for in the form of a salary then have additional aspirations. Using Maslow’s pyramid as a basis for evaluating employee motivation levels one could argue that the specific practises of employee participation constitute various stages of the pyramid beyond that of the first two stages which is considered under the classical view of management. For instance one way in which an organisation may choose to implement employee participation is in the form of focus groups with reference to a specific issue such as production line down time. In this case previous to the focus group one may view the average assembly line worker as having the first two needs met owing to receiving a regular monthly salary. However once a focus group has been set up to consider a specific issue such as that mentioned it is conceivable that the next two steps of the pyramid are fulfilled as the line worker now becomes part of a team fulfilling the third need and also is given some status as the organisation by the very act of asking for their opinion is giving them a status within the organisation as someone with technical knowledge and thus a valid opinion. In theory one could argue that as an increasing number of the employees needs are met this will lead to increased motivation and morale and thus reduce the possibility of the individual wanting to leave the organisation.

Costs associated with labour turn over can represent a considerable expense for organisations under two headings. In the first instance there is the financial cost to an organisation which includes costs associated with re-recruitment as well as any lost revenue associated directly with the loss of an employee. Secondly there is the cost to the business in disruption and lost knowledge. Research suggests that the average cost of replacing an employee is around ?3,546 which rises to around ?5,206 for more highly skilled employees (Thornton 2000). From a scale perspective the CBI (1997) estimates that in the UK labour turnover stands at 16% which rises to 25% in part time workers leaving significant room for improvement and thus a significant opportunity for cost savings especially in the part time sector. As such one can see that by reducing staff turnover by even a small amount this can deliver significantly higher financial performance for an organisation.

Method:

Finally having considered the potential benefits and drawbacks of employee participation one must consider the methods used in order to undertake employee participation. In many instances the benefits an organisation can gain from employee participation come from extracting knowledge from the workforce which already exists. As such many of the methods which need to be considered are issues in communications since the knowledge and information already exists but is often not being extracted and used by those higher up the corporate structure. One key method highlighted by Adiar (1989 p32-34) is that of consultation, consultation may be interpreted as any genuine attempt to gain the knowledge, feelings and opinions of the workforce which may then be used in the decision making process. As such the methods used may be broad in range from quality circles and focus groups through to town hall style meetings or suggest box schemes. However to qualify as true consultation each of these acts must take place before decisions are made. It is often felt by many that consultation takes place after decisions have already been made by those in senior management positions. In these cases performance may actually decrease as the workforce perceives a lack of commitment from the management within the organisation, were consultation is undertake after decisions have already truly been made this may also be seen as a misallocation of resources by the company.

Another consideration of employee participation is that of employee reward. There are many options for encouraging employees to take a greater level of responsibility for their actions and thus increasing their overall level of participation. Such considerations may include share schemes, bonuses or additional annual leave related to certain performance levels. Regardless of the method employed the mechanism may be seen as a function of agency theory in which the interest of the employee and organisation can be harmonised thus increasing performance. By linking the employees personal performance to the ability for the employee as an individual to benefit the belief is that performance will increase as the employee peruses a personal opportunity.

Conclusion:

One conclusion would be that increased employee participation has the potential to create significant increases in performance for both the individual and the organisation as a whole. From the organisational perspective there may be significant increases in financial performance as the high costs of labour turnover are reduced as part of the increase in participation. Secondly the organisation is likely to experience a significant increase in performance with regard to its competitive advantage as the organisation will now be using its labour in potentially a more efficient way in the form of a strategic resource as opposed to a simple cash for labour transaction. From the individual perspective increased participation can lead to increases in performance as firstly an improved attitude to work increases output and secondly the benefits of the individual being able to organise their work in the way they see best contributes to work being organised in a more efficient way.

However whist it is acknowledged that increased employee participation can contribute significantly to increased performance it is by no means either a panacea for all organisational ills nor is it a necessity for improving performance in all instances. One should remember that whist some companies such as Toyota have adopted a positive attitude towards employee participation there are still many successful companies which maintain a tradition approach towards the division of management and employee tasks. Furthermore companies operating such traditional approaches to the management of their employees are not limited the manufacturing sector with call centres being a prime example of were the service sector has failed to embrace increased employee participation choosing alternative methods to improve performance.

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This work was produced by one of our professional writers as a learning aid to help you with your studies

‘A key aspect of the management task is to secure employee commitment to the organisation. Critically comment on some of the various forms of commitment and outline the problems involved in gaining employee commitment to an organisation’.
Introduction

Employee commitment is a crucial ‘work attitude’ (Morris et al, 1993:22). It has been defined in several similar ways to emphasise its behavioural and psychological moorings. For instance: “… a stabilizing force that acts to maintain behavioural direction when expectancy/equity conditions are not met and do not function” (Locke, 1976: 1298) and; “… a psychological state that binds the individual to the organization” (Allen & Meyer, 1990:4).

The level of commitment relates to several aspects such as satisfaction, turnover, cognitive resonance between different hierarchical levels, and performance on the job (Kreisman, 2002). The complexity in and importance of understanding employee commitment thus makes it a key feature of managerial task. This essay examines the body of knowledge from past research to reflect on such commitment and issues in harnessing it.

Forms of Employee Commitment

There has been extensive work in the area of dimensionality or typology of employee commitment (e.g. Vandenberg and Scapello, 1994; Williams and Hazer, 1986; Johnson and Yang 2010). This is drawn from, and has also in turn informed the understanding difficulties in gaining managerial commitment. Employees maybe committed for different reasons and thus different forms of commitment need to be contextualised. There is considerable overlap in the ‘architecture of forms’ posited by different writers as they have come to grips with this concept that is crucial for organisational performance (e.g. Bennett, 2000; Meyer et al., 2004).

The three dimensional framework presented by Meyer and Allen (1997) and taken further the workplace model of Meyer and Herscovitch (2001), are central to most conceptualisations presented in extant research.

The three dimensional framework posited the following as dimensions based on employee mind-sets:

1. Affective commitment: Is understood as the employee’s constructive emotional bonding to the organisation. Such an employee strongly associates himself/ herself with organisational goals and seeks to stay with the organisation because he/she wishes to do so.
2. Continuance commitment: Here the emotional quotient is largely moot and the employee perceives it to be very costly to lose organisational membership. This could be for a host of reasons – right from financial costs of salary and benefits to social costs of ties and reputation. Such an employee stays with the organisation because he or she is tied in.
3. Normative commitment: There is an obligatory notion at play here. The employee feels to return the value commitments made in him/ her by the organisation. The loyalty aspect is strong- either due to individualised value perceptions that direct behaviour or due to social norms that apply to the context and relate with the environment the organisation belongs to.

The fundamental basis of distinguishing between these is that they have very contrasting impacts on/ implications for behaviour (Meyer et al, 2004). This behaviour in turn has very important implications for the work environment and subsequent performance. Extant research indicates that affective commitment is strongly associated with not only job performance, but also with organisational citizenship, and often is a precursor to normative commitment. Continuance commitment is negatively associated with these aspects and usually needs to be moderated in favour of the other two forms of commitment (Johnson and Yang, 2010; Morris et al, 1993). This assertion also suggests that while all three forms of commitment are useful to operationalise they need to be scoped and balanced carefully.

Employee commitment: The Pillars of Conceptualisation

Another significant development in understanding employee commitment has been the approach to directing commitment towards specific targets or “foci”, that relate to employee behaviour at workplace (Johnson and Yang, 2010:230; Meyer et al, 2004:998). The theorisation in the area of employee commitment thus stands on two pillars- that of form and of focus. There is an arguably third pillar that is about the “bases of commitment” (Allen and Meyer, 1990: 3). These bases refer to factors that lead to development of the aforementioned forms of commitment. For instance, affective commitment can seem to be developed based on alignment of individual values with organisational values, and extent of personal involvement. On the other hand, normative commitment can be seen to be a function of social processes and cultural orientation that orients individuals towards reciprocation (Bennett, 2000). Continuous commitment which is a contrast to these two more constructive forms of commitment is a function of stakes that an employee builds in, or employee investment in a course of action (Meyer et al, 2004).

The essence of conceptualisation around employee motivation is thus about variables of ‘form’, ‘foci’ and of ‘bases’. Recent work has tried to integrate commitment and motivation theories. This is to posit that there is a recursive and mutually enabling relationship between the two (Johnson and Yang, 2010). The contribution of this research has been to embed commitment as a subset of motivation and explain how “employees’ relationships with social foci influence behaviour relevant to the foci” (Meyer et al, 2004: 1003). Such integration provides for levers to augment commitment by providing variables such as goal choice, self-efficacy and goal directedness. It is particularly useful in developing the directional paradigm that is associated with commitment towards tasks or ‘foci’ (Johnson and Yang, 2010; Lawson and Price, 2003).

Good Practice Prescriptions for Managers

Such recent research has also followed up on Meyer et al, (2004) call for examining the motivation and commitment nexus to operationalise and deliver practice relevant levers for employee commitment. Johnson and Yang (2010) provide a perspective in this light by explicitly pinning down different motivations that influence the different forms of commitment. Their empirical analysis provides a model that can predict behavioural response to initiatives directed towards augmenting, reinforcing or balancing the different forms of motivations.

Based on work that seeks to identify levers behind employee commitment the following practice relevant aspects can be identified for improving commitment (e.g. Vandenberghe et al, 2007).

• Clarity in communication about how organisational goals align with individual goals. This calls for the right-kind of “capacitated middle managers (Shibata et al, 1991).
• Building a legacy, and working on developing value based practices that see the organisation as a function of its members.
• Developing a trusting environment where communication is seen, heard and decisions are perceived as being fair.
• Building a community structure around work processes and across disciplinary areas- where people share and relate to their team and the broader organisational context.
• Enrich employee development on the job and through the job. This is by a reward and challenge environment -where developmental needs are encouraged to arise from the employees themselves

Barriers to/Problems in achieving Employee Commitment

The barriers or difficulties in eliciting employee commitment stem from several sources. The most cited one is that of organisational focus on achieving short term performance goals at the expense of long term employee development, and low investment in building shared vision and community like schemas (Breukelen, 1996). This barrier is manifested more specifically in the role description and performance assessment criteria of middle managers that are both highly measurable and short term oriented. The leadership role that the middle manager needs to play in aligning individual goals with the organisational goals is often on a back burner (Shibata et al, 1991; Locke, 1976).

Another barrier that follows is the potentially low importance given to: internal signals about reputation; management’s demonstration of concern for employees’ vis-a-vis concern for performance and; willingness of top management to be inclusive of views and opinions of employees. Such signals directly affect employee perception of their position in the organisational scheme of things. In context of the forms of commitment discussed before this can be about: being an integral part of the organisation contributing to something they value; feeling gratitude for what the organisation has offered to them and/or being tied in only for the direct benefits they receive from what is they perceive as their best choice as an employer given the risks of disassociation (Lawson and price, 2003; Johnson and Yang, 2010).
It is clear that poorly managed signals can lead to lower levels of commitment or a sub-optimal balance between favourable and less favourable forms of commitment.

Still another difficulty relates to the right kind of employees and the right kind of mix of employees that is created overtime. Lack strategic thinking on recruitment policies to align with the requirements of the organisation – as a social milieu and as an economic entity may also create a mismatch between the organisation and its employees (Allen and Seinko, 1997).

The organisational appeal to the employees for contribution and performance is usually leveraged on explicit or implied tangible outcomes for the employee. This is a barrier in itself as it leads to sub-optimal performance outcomes. Psychological attachment led on the job performance by employees improves overall organisational performance. This is because the employee feels to have shared the outcome in a more socio-cognitive manner by having a feeling of belongingness (Bennett, 2000; William and Hazer, 1986). This right kind of commitment is also compromised by a legacy of rewards to tangible outcomes and target achievement vis-a-vis say good citizenship behaviour (Wright, 2001).

Barriers to or difficulties in employee commitment are also contextual, and have been of particular interest in extant research with reference to management of change (Strebel, 1996)*). In the case of the turnaround undertaken at Lufthansa in early 1990s research has identified the emphasis on communication and capacitated middle managerial roles as crucial to sustaining and garnering employee commitment during the turnaround. A similar emphasis on employee commitment was seen at Saatchi and Saatchi for regaining a focus on its creative businesses portfolio albeit with a drive on aspects to do with the right signalling mechanisms to create greater trust (Mintzberg et al., 1990) getting it had been seen at Saatchi and Saatchi but with an emphasis (Mintzberg et al, 2003)change.

The difficulties identified in light of the above instances, because of which the relevant drivers of commitment were focussed upon, fall under what are identified as generic barriers to employee commitment in times of change. These are ‘disruptions to relationship’; threat of statuses; the desire to retain status-quo’ and; ‘tangible benefits’ related adverse consequences (Bennett, 2000:127,128). Different forms of commitment are affected differently in times of change, and overall commitment and its impact on change itself is a function of existing levels and combination of the different forms. The nature of business and industry culture also influence such an impact. However, there is some consensus in research that the initial levels of commitment, if not overtly led by the form of ‘continuance commitment’, tend to contribute affirmatively to change (Zell, 2001:78; Caldwell, 1990).

Conclusions

It has been clearly established that the different forms of commitment demand a balancing act by managers so that a right mix is arrived at. While ‘continuance commitment’ is one form that is not seen in very positively light- it is also a lever to be engaged when an organisation wants quick and organisation-wide uptake and sanction for initiatives. That affective and normative commitment should lead the mix is irrefutable. However, initial dispositions of the employees, the legacy of organisational human resource strategy, and the social and culture milieu influence and pre-ordain a lot of what can be done to influence such a mix (Caldwell, 1990).

Garnering employee commitment is a process that requires time and conscious effort, and because it is not (usually) subjected to measurement, managerial roles and tasks oriented towards it suffer because of the “objectivity of performance parameters” that are set for managers (Allen and Meyer, 1990: 4). Advances in measurement of employee commitment, and in predictive models that provide a cause effect relationship to inform the highly socio-cognitive arena of employee commitment, have changed this scheme of things. A better interface with the field of motivation, task mandates (foci), and understanding of the bases behind forms has also matured in research. This has bridged the gap between theory and practice. Middle managers are becoming very central to employee commitment related initiatives. The ever important top management sanction for investment in time and resources towards employee commitment is also at an all-time high. This is particularly because of the present recessionary times where the pressures of change and adaptation have amplified the difficulties in and importance of harnessing and sustaining employee commitment.

References

Allen, N.J. & Meyer, J.P. (1990). The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63: 1-8.

Allen, P. & Seinko, S. (1997). A comparison of contingent and core workers’ perceptions of their jobs’ characteristics and motivational properties. S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal, Summer 1997, 62 (3): 4-12

Bennett, H. (2000). The effects of organizational change on employee psychological attachment. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 15: 126-148.

Breukelen, J.W.M. Van (1996). Organizational commitment in perspective. Gedrag en Organisatie, 9:145-166.

Caldwell, D.F., Chatman, J.A. & O’Reilly, C.A. (1990). Building organizational commitment: A multi-firm study. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63: 245-261.

Johnson, R.E. & Yang, Liu-Yang (2010). Commitment and Motivation at Work: The relevance of employee identity and regulatory focus. Academy of Management Review, 35(2): 226-245.

Kreisman, B. (2002). Insights into Employee Retention, Commitment and Motivation [Online] Available at: http://www.insightsvancouver.com/PDFs/Employee%20Commitment-Retention%20White%20Paper%5B1%5D.pdf [Accessed 31 October 2010].

Lawson, E. & Price, C. (2003). The Psychology of change management. McKinsey Quarterly, 2: 30-36.

Locke, E. A. (1976). The nature and causes of job satisfaction. In M, D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology. Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1297-1349

Meyer, J.P. & Herscovitch, L. (2001). Commitment in work-place: Towards a general model. Human Resource Management Review, 11:299-326.

Meyer, J., Becker, T. & Vandenberghe, C.(2004). Employees Commitment and Motivation: A Conceptual Analysis and Integrative Model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(6): 991-1007

Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand, B. & Lampel, J. (1998) Strategy Safari: A guided tour through the wilds of strategic management, The Free Press, New York, 1998, 234-321.

Morris, M., Lydka, H.& O’Creevy, M.F. (1993). Can commitment be managed? A longitudinal analysis of employee commitment and human resource policies. Human Resource Management Journal, 3 (3): 21-29.

Shibata, G. TSE. D., Vertinsky, I. & Wehrung, D. (1991) Do norms of decision-making styles, organisational design and management affect performance of Japanese firms? An exploratory study of medium and large firms. Managerial and Decision Economics, 12(2): 135-146.

Strebel, P. (1996). Why do employees resist change? Harvard Business Review, 74: 86-88.

Sugarman, B. (2001). A learning-based approach to organizational change: Some results and guidelines. Organizational Dynamics, 30: 62-77.

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Vanderberghe, C., Bentein, K., Michan, R., Checat, J., Tremblay, M. & Fils, J. (2007). An examination of the perceived support and employee commitment in an employee-customer encounters. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92: 1177-1187.

Williams, L. J. & Hazer, J. T. (1986). Antecedents and consequences of satisfaction and commitment in turnover models: A re-analysis using latent variable structural equations models. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 219-231.

Wright, B. (2001). Public-Sector Work Motivation: A Review of the Current Literature and a Revised Conceptual Model. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 11 :(4).

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The purpose of the presentation is to present the key recommendations for developing an effective management and leadership programme.

Make a presentation including bibliography/references which will show your source of information gathered.

Details about the reliability of your information, why did you choose the source, and to what extent can you trust the source and why- e.g. a company report might be more upbeat about the situation of the company than an externally conducted analysis similarly. Similarly you might identify conflicting information from different newspapers on their political biases etc how did you get around this.

Leadership and management have been amongst the most studied and controversial topics of the study of business and management for the last century. The body of theory which has grown up around the subject reflects the change in thought on management theory and can be distilled into a framework which shows the evolution f the ideas of what makes a good leader and management, and by proxy of this one can define with reference to the theory the key skills which need to be developed in order to produce good leaders. Broadly there have been a number of movements in the thought on leadership and management, beginning with the ‘great man’ approach, defined in a number of studies on the history of leadership and management studies as the belief that leaders are exceptional people born to great innate abilities, this reflects the early school of militaristic styles of leadership, reflected in the organisation as a male dominated and hierarchical structures to business as a whole. This data is drawn from two key studies, one a study of the comparisons of more modern transformational leadership compared with previous styles, which allows one to assess the need for key innate personality traits, the other a modern study of an attempt to define a universal framework of leadership. Both of these studies argue that a key part of the management and leadership of an organisation, despite the move from the great man approach, is still rooted in the idea of an inspirational character with innate abilities. These abilities have also been studied with some detail and indeed the evolutionary process in management thought moved from this point to study the traits that made an effective leader and manager. The table shown below comes from an extensive study on the skills and traits of leaders, and is still used in theory to define those skills advantageous to leaders and managers.

Leadership Skills and Traits (Stogdill, 1974)

Therefore it can be argued with reference to the literature that the first steps in designing an effective leadership and management programme is to identify by aptitude and ability the kind of people who are going to make good leaders. In the past it was thought that leadership was something that one was born to, but as will be seen the relationship to leadership of the personality is not as clear cut and much depends on the type of leadership one wishes to develop, and indeed the organisational factors.
The movement away from the individual qualities of leadership began with the behavioral school, according to much of the literature the move is seen as a departure from the militaristic style of the study of management and leadership. Theories of the subject include the now standard McGregor’s X and Y beliefs, shown below;

Theory X and Y Managers (McGregor, 1960)

And Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, as depicted below;

The Blake Mouton Managerial Grid (Blake & Mouton, 1964)

This move away from seeing the organization as more than a hierarchy with leaders at the top of the pile and workers as subservient to them is a dramatic change in management theory and suggests that in designing any effective leadership or management structure and training the type and classification of the organization and the people involved become central to the success. Clearly this is demonstrated by a body of literature on the subject of behavioral management, and it is easy to see why the move become more popular than traditional management as it follows a move in the philosophy of management as a whole. The behavioral School I still important, but the consensus has been that it cannot explain everything in the leadership and management paradigm. Modern thought has centered on a contingency paradigm, which begins from the point that there is no one way to manage or lead, and the correct style is contingent on the nature of the organization, the external needs of the business and society and the internal needs of the workers and management. A number of models have been produced, from ones dealing with social enterprise and the public sector, of which this example from the National College for School Leadership is an example of the types of leadership they have identified;

“•

Emergent leadership

, when a teacher is beginning to take on management and leadership responsibilities and perhaps forms an aspiration to become a headteacher
•

Established leadership

, comprising assistant and deputy heads who are experienced leaders but who do not intend to pursue headship
•

Entry to headship

, including a teacher’s preparation for and induction into the senior post in a school
•

Advanced leadership

, the stage at which school leaders mature in their role, look to widen their experience, to refresh themselves and to update their skills
•

Consultant leadership

, when an able and experienced leader is ready to put something back into the profession by taking on training, mentoring, inspection or other responsibilities.”

To frameworks developed for the professions especially in terms of ethical leadership and responsibilities, as this one from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales;

Through to the guidance and descriptions issued by the IMPM for its advanced leadership and management course;

“The International Masters Program in Practicing Management is designed to be the “Next Generation” Masters Program, combining management development with management education. It is a degree program that focuses directly on the development of managers in their own contexts – their jobs and their organizations. The IMPM is therefore deeper than conventional programs of management development and more applied than traditional degree programs. It was launched in March of 1996 to acclaim from participants and their companies alike, as well as from the international business press.

“The IMPM seeks to break the mould of the functional “silos” so common in management education – marketing, finance, organization behaviour, and so on. Instead, the Program is structured around managerial “mindsets”, one for each module. It opens in Lancaster with managing in general and the

reflective

mindset in particular. Then it moves to McGill, where attention turns to Managing Organizations and the

analytic

mindset. Bangalore follows with Managing Context, the

worldly

mindset. In Japan, it takes up Managing Relationships, the

collaborative

mindset. The Program closes at INSEAD with Managing Change, the

action

mindset.
More detail is given about each of these mindsets by Mintzberg and Gosling (2003):

• The

reflective

mindset refers to “managing self” – developing the ability to reflect and make meaning – a form of emotional intelligence.

• The

analytic

mindset refers to “managing organisations” – developing the ability to analyse and synthesise not only the hard data, but also the soft – “to appreciate scores and crowds while never losing sight of the ball”.

• The

worldly

mindset refers to “managing contexts” – to appreciate cultural and local differences and similarities and respond accordingly.

• The

collaborative

mindset refers to “managing relationships” – developing partnerships and networks; working with people – managing “relationships” not “people”.

• The

action

mindset refers to “managing movement” [or “change and continuity”, or “mobilization”] – managing change without losing track of continuity.

It is argued that the good manager/leader must master and integrate each of these mindsets and so offers a more cognitive and reflective approach to management development than more traditional behaviour and skills-based programmes.”
In conclusion the recommendation of this presentation is to consider three areas of design. Firstly to consider the criteria for considering an applicant’s needs and suitability, reflecting the traits, in relation to the needs and requirements of the organization, reflecting the contingency of the organization and society. Secondly to look closely at the needs of the organization, especially at the needs of subordinates and the overall strategic direction of the organization, which reflects both behavioral and the specific needs of the organization in relation with the external environment. Lastly To examine the type of leadership needed, with specific reference to the examples from the public, private and professional examples given above, which show that the ideal leadership and management style is very specific to the sector in which the organization is based.

References

Blake, R.R. and J.S. Mouton (1964) The managerial grid. Houston TX: Gulf.
Gronn, P. (1995) Greatness Re-visited: The current obsession with transformational leadership. Leading and Managing 1(1), 14-27.
Gosling, J. and Mintzberg, H. (2003) Mindsets for Managers. Working paper, Centre for Leadership Studies.
Hamlin. R. (2002) Towards a Universalistic Model of Leadership: a comparative study of British and American empirically derived criteria of managerial and leadership effectiveness. Working paper WP005/02, University of Wolverhampton.
McGregor, D. (1960) The Human Side of Enterprise. New York: McGraw Hill.
Stogdill, R. (1974) Handbook of Leadership (1st Ed.). New York: Free Press.

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Critically discuss Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). What are the implications for a firm that does not conduct CSR?

Date authored: 08 ^th August, 2014.

This essay will commence with showing that a definition of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is required and will then provide a definition and an indication of the scope. CSR will then be broken down into groupings and each looked at from a company perspective to show the advantages of CSR and disadvantages when not using CSR. Companies have a choice; and the implications of not conducting CSR will also be considered.

There is very little legislature on the subject of CSR. The nearest available is environmental standards in the UK and Internationally by the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO). (ISO 14000, 2006). The newer Social Responsibility standards (ISO 26000, 2010) are only guidelines, with no fixed rules or framework for an organisation to certify to the standards. It is no surprise, therefore, that many companies define CSR in their own way, and thus can set their own objectives which they can easily attain. When it is born in mind that CSR can have such a wide range of practices that support it, it is easy for a company to pick and choose what it does.

So, for a discussion of CSR, a single consistent definition is required. The definition that will be used here is from the European Commission’s 2011-14 corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, which defines CSR as “a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interactions with stakeholders on a voluntary basis” (UK Government, 2014: 3).

According to the Business Minister, Jenny Willott, MP “Corporate responsibility is at the heart of successful businesses.” (Willott, 2014). That means that it refers to a set of actions performed by a company, over and above its normal business, that contributes towards sustainable development.

Corporate Social Responsibility can include a wide range of factors, from ethical and fair trade to reputation and brand management. The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE, 2014) identifies additional issues as part of CSR, including animal welfare, diversity and equal opportunities, community investment, giving aid to local organisations and communities in developing countries and helping to build the skills of the local people through community based development.

CSR can affect goodwill, employment practices, expansion, stakeholders, company standards, company strategy and much more. One survey on the main reasons that companies engage in CSR puts top management interest as the number one reason, with company reputation, profit, customers’ expectation and attracting employees following close behind (Habisch, et al., 2005).

It is usual to identify these factors in a good light (as a bonus to the companies) and it is common to see CSR statements in companies’ annual reports and glossy handouts. However this can draw attention to a company’s practices and can be disastrous when non socially-responsible practices are exposed in the media. For example Nike when they were accused of using child labour in the production of its soccer balls in Pakistan. (Urip, 2011). Note that Nike went through a huge transformation as a result and are now considered an industry leader in the area of CSR (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2013).

So CSR has a very wide remit. Buy why should companies take on CSR? To analyse this, it is necessary to group all the parts of CSR so that each one does not have to discussed individually. For the grouping, we use Schwartz (2011), who breaks down CSR into three distinct parts; these being legal, economic, and ethical. Each of these will be addressed in turn.

Addressing those parts of CSR which are covered by UK law, there is limited legislation in the UK on the subject of CSR. One reference is in section 172 of the companies Act, where it says:

“A director of a company must act in the way he considers, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole, and in doing so have regard (amongst other matters) to … the impact of the company’s operations on the community and the environment” (Companies Act, 2006).

Other countries have more strict legislation, for example in Denmark, there has been an obligation for larger businesses to consider and report on CSR since 2009 (Gorrissen Federspiel, 2014). In California, large manufacturers and retailers have to disclose what actions they are taking to address the risks of human trafficking and forced labour in their supply chains (Altschuller, 2011). It is clear that non-compliance with any legal requirements (whether CSR or otherwise) carries great risk and can cause the company to be prosecuted and potentially put out of business.

The economic issues would appear to make sense in that when following a CSR practice, the company can also save money, which translates to increased profit. One example is hotels that allow you to choose between reusing your towel and having it replaced depending on where you leave it after you have used it. This can save the hotel water and electricity to wash it, while still offering the guest the choice (McElhaney, 2008).

However where Pernecky and Luck (2013) suggest holding Virtual Meetings rather than physical meetings, thus saving travel, meals, hotels, etc. looks like it is a CSR policy that just saves money. However it is important to measure whether the virtual meetings attain the required objectives. Thus it is not always obvious which practices will lead to economic advantages, or which economic CSR approaches will meet the requirements of the business.

The ethical issues, such as a company taking a CSR approach without having to or clearly having economic benefits can also be used to gain positive publicity (Idowu & Filho, 2009), which can raise the image of the company, thus providing longer term benefits, such as increased goodwill. Idowu & Filho go on to say that this can be used for marketing to show that the company is ahead of its rivals due to its CSR approach.

One advantage of CSR is brand demarcation. Many companies look for something which will set them apart from the competition. For example the Excel centre, a large conference venue near Canary Wharf in London has achieved six awards relating to CSR, for example The Sunday Times “Best Green Companies” award (Excel, 2014). If a company is looking for a conference venue in London, and Excel is implementing CSR whereas another venue is not, this gives the client a reason to select Excel, and something extra the company can say on its marketing. So it is an advantage for Excel to support CSR which can lead to directly affecting the bottom line.

Local support and getting licences can be made easier for a company if it has a CSR policy. Such a company is seen locally as a good company and this can improve how the company is seen by locals and can help to provide support for the company’s plans where local support is an advantage (e.g. a new building, opening late into the night).

Having a CSR policy which is implemented and draws people’s attention to it can help to distract the public from other things that could have negative implications for a company. For example if a company have very high board members pay, this can lower the public’s view of the company. However if the company is seen to put the environment first, and it puts resources directly into supporting this, this can overshadow the board members pay (Grayson & Hodges, 2004).

A company that has a CSR policy throughout the company can improve the staff’s attachment to the company. They believe that their work partly helps the community and can do much to improve morale. Also they may be keener to participate in events such as fundraising which they may do in their own time and gain the company goodwill whilst costing the company nothing (ibid).

There is a trend moving towards CSR (Fiorina, 2003). With national and international standards on CSR related issues becoming more common, and laws likely to follow, there is a large bonus in getting CSR well embedded in a company before a law demands it. When laws are passed, this puts a fixed timescale on the changes to CSR. This can cause CSR to be implemented at an inopportune time, and a time when other companies are doing the same, and potentially costing many times more.

However the situation is not all good. There are considered to be disadvantages of CSR and these must be understood and addressed before a company implements CSR. There are those who say that the sole purpose of a business is to make money (e.g. Friedman, 1970). Anything that detracts from that is considered to be a distraction from the business’s core function. This can make share-holders get fewer dividends because the company is involved in a scheme which costs money and resources to implement but does not directly add to the bottom line. This point can be countered by a company implementing CSR policies in order to reduce excessive inputs and wastes in their supply chain, which saves them money (Idowu & Louche, 2011).

To take a more recent example, the Commission for Green Tax Reform in Portugal put forward a proposal on 9^th July 2014 for a package of environmental taxes. These would include additional taxes on fuel, air travel and the use of plastic bags (Lomas, 2014). In fact, Fleming & Jones (2012) claim that CSR is fatally compromised and, when applied to large multinational corporations, does more harm than good. The claim says that many companies are not taking CSR seriously and only implement a few measures that help them make money and stop there rather than implementing a comprehensive CSR approach.

One question is whether a company’s CSR policy should also apply to all of its suppliers down the line. One example of this was in 2012 when Tazreen Fashions factory, a clothing making factory in Bangladesh caught fire and caused the death of 112 workers. The working conditions were appalling. This reflected badly on their customers, such as Wal-Mart and Sears, who sold products made in this factory. In the investigation, it was revealed that neither Wal-Mart nor Sears even knew that the products they sold were being made in this factory (Crane and Matten, 2012).

However in general, CSR is becoming more and more important. If we just take environmental issues as an example, Bowdin, et al. (2006) shows that considerations of environmental issues are increasingly paramount.

Without a set of standards there are no requirements from the government or standards organisations on implementation. Although there are demands from customers for CSR values (ibid), and as has been shown, the benefits are considerable, it falls to the companies themselves to implement CSR. And within the companies, it falls to the management of the company to set a CSR policy and use it to guide them throughout their company.

If management plan and implement a CSR policy, it can be rewarded. For example some companies have CSR targets and executives who deliver or exceed these targets are rewarded (Horrigan, 2010). Alternatively, CSR can be built into the plan right from the start. An example of this is the Olympics, where a philosophy is so much built into the Olympic Games that it is built into their charter. (International Olympic Committee, 2014).

As has been shown after mistakes such as at Nike, it can be critical to implement CSR policy throughout the organisation. Failure to do this can cause problems that can greatly affect the company’s goodwill and thus its sales.

All showing that a CSR philosophy can be vital for organisations and actually implementing the philosophy can lead to rewards whereas failure can lead to disaster.

These days, all major companies have a CSR statement (Musafer, 2014). And their CSR statement is being looked at to see if it is really authentic or just superficial. Musafer (ibid) also claims that if a company is not implementing CSR in a genuine way, it can be very damaging to that company.

To summarise, although CSR is not a panacea for any company, there are many CSR options that can be taken by companies which would benefit their company. In addition a failure to implement CSR approaches can be costly. However each company procedure should be considered as to whether it best suits the company to take a CSR approach depending on the costs and benefits (or risks).

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Corporate responsibility is at the heart of successful businesses [Accessed 2 August 2014]

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At the heart of any organisation lies its culture in which are found the philosophies on how to work together and individually, how to treat customers, and how to generate revenue or keep the business operating successfully. Leaders and even middle managers are concerned with meeting some key goals tied to customers, products, and revenue, but they sometimes do not pay attention to the culture. The overriding beliefs and behaviours in the organisation that truly determine the ability to hit those key goals or not (Ford 2008: 1). It is the culture that determines how things get done, whether it is in a good or bad way, and it provides the mechanism for changing strategies and responding to competition or causing the demise of a merger or creating silos of isolation and conflict (Ford 2008: 2).

Therefore, effectively managing culture in a way that addresses problems and helps everyone in the organisation embrace this culture will provide a strong foundation for accomplishing all the organisation’s strategic objectives. This paper will critically evaluate both the assumptions and methods put forward by various writers, including Edgar Schein, to effectively manage organisational culture as an integral component of management practices and strategic success.

Understanding Organisational Culture

As part of social science, the study of culture has been around for many decades as a means of better understanding how it plays a role in the “functioning of society” (Denison and Mishra 1995: 204). In recent years, business theorists began to look at the organisation of companies in the same manner, understanding that the same socialisation process could be applied to a business that previously might have just been seen as an intangible thing rather than a living organism that was made up of individual and collective behaviours.

One book described culture as the result of “group learning experiences in which a number of people face a problem and work out a solution together” (Miner 2007: 321). This could mean that one organisation develops a culture that can provide them with a competitive advantage whilst another may focus on ethical or environmental standards and still another may look to create a culture that is geared toward customers or technological innovation (Sims 2002: 301). Whatever the case, the culture is directed toward a particular belief about one of those areas that serves to direct all the organisation’s approach to strategy as well as its interaction with the external and internal environments.

That would certainly describe what is happening with business today as products and services are framed around finding solutions whilst internal processes are devised to solve internal problems. Other issues on an internal scale are also being linked to culture, especially when it comes to large firms caught up in scandals riddled with a lack of ethics like Enron and many of the recent lending practices in the U.S. and the U.K. that led to the credit crunch, in which the blame was placed firmly on the shoulders of the leaders and the culture that they had developed that might have promoted greed and a lack of ethical behaviours (Pfister 2009: 2).

Now that this understanding is becoming more readily accepted within organisational studies, theories on business culture and how it is being managed have begun to be formulated with a diverse array of ideas about how it plays out within management practice and organisational development (Martin 1992: 4. One of the earliest proponents of an organisational culture theory was Edgar Schein who believed that organisational culture was comprised of “assumptions, values, and artefacts” (Hatch 1993: 657). His perspective was based on a functional perspective in which these three components, which help to explain specific standards, beliefs, and ideals, form the basis of how to react to and cope with other factors that would help existing workers and new members to perceive and think about these factors in the same way to achieve a “normal” way in which to address existing problems or issues (Schein 1988: 12).

In this way, Schein’s theory illustrated that culture was a multi-layered intangible within a company that was first based on visible organizational structures and processes known as artefacts that were then connected to the organisation’s values (the strategies, philosophies, and goals) as well as to the basic underlying assumptions in an organisation, which is comprised of those beliefs that are “a given” or that are “taken for granted” (Schein 1992: 2). Similarly, Rousseau saw culture as a multi-layered, ring-like framework in which there are both visible and invisible signs and feelings of an organisation’s culture both of which must be addressed (1990: 158), illustrating that it is both tangible and intangible aspect of daily operations.

Since then, a number of theories have evolved from this early definition to envision organisational culture as a combination of these components as well as symbols and processes, which provide fluidity and flexibility for cultures to shift and change based on both dynamic internal and external factors (Hatch 1993: 657). There are three key theoretical views of culture in organisations that help to explain how culture works and what it achieves. First, the integrative theory sees culture as a means of achieving some sort of a consensus across the organisation in which there is general agreement and united effort toward a common goal and purpose (Martin 2002: 94).

The differentiation theory maintains that there may be subcultures or groups within an organisation that share a common belief but that may diverge from an overall consensus (Martin 2002: 94). Then, there is the fragmentation theory, which maintains that there may always be ambiguity and conflict within any type of culture but that it is necessary in order to adapt, be flexible, and be open to change (Martin 2002: 94). These last two theories contend that these types of organisational cultures are often found in large organisations, particularly those that are global in nature (Bush 2003: 160).

There are also typologies of organisational cultures that have been developed within theoretical frameworks as a way to categorise certain approaches to developing a culture. For instance, Quinn & McGrath (1985: 318) created four types of organisational structures–Hierarchy, Market, Adhocracy, and Clan) that correlated with four cultural types–Hierarchical, Rational, Ideological, and Consensual. These have then been used as benchmarks for organisations that are looking to adapt their cultures or bring structure to what has become a fragmented culture in order to take advantage of the of cultural types and accompanying behaviours and ideals in hopes of improving their performance.

Theories on Managing Organisational Culture

Since many theorists contend that organisational culture very much impacts an organisation’s ability to attract and retain talent, achieve specific performance levels that achieve profitability, and grow and expand operations (Denison and Mishra 1995: 204), it is clear that culture must be crafted, shaped, and managed in an effective way in order for it to help those within the organisation realise certain strategic objectives.

This is especially important in a business environment that is becoming more turbulent and unstable as well as one that requires specific cultural change when the external environment and demands shift as well as dynamic internal changes occur, especially when dealing with mergers of two organisations with different cultures (Ashkanasy et al. 2000: 261).

For example, one study found a direct correlation between company performance, using annual growth rates in sales, equity ratio, and the rate of return on its total assets, when study 88 Japanese organisations of various sizes (Kono 1990: 11). The highest performance rates were in those companies that had a vitalised, follow the leader culture and a vitalised culture versus those cultures that were stagnant, follow the leader and stagnant, and bureaucratic (Kono 1990: 12). Often, the cultures that were stagnant and bureaucratic were found in the larger organisations as well as those that had older employees versus those organisations that were newer, younger, and more flexible in their cultures (Kono 1990: 17).

Hence, a number of traits have to be in place and carefully managed to formulate an organisational culture that will become embedded in the organisation and become part of the daily behaviours of all that work there. One theory of organisational culture suggests that there are four key traits that management must nurture, namely consistency, adaptability, involvement, and mission (Denison and Mishra 1995: 204). These traits also involve other effective behaviours that have been identified for helping an organisational culture focus on the right aspects of business, and these include “flexibility, openness, and responsiveness” as “strong predictors of growth” (Denison and Mishra 1995: 204). Additionally, other behaviours that are essential with a business culture include profitability predictors, such as “integration, direction, and vision” (Denison and Mishra 1995: 204). Even more current literature suggests the need for an organisational culture to focus on these three behaviours as a formula for success.

Schein referred to the development and management of these traits as cultural embedding, which is primarily the responsibility of an organisation’s leader and management team based on what they determine are the most important values, traits, and goals to have for the organisation to achieve what it intends to do (Miner 2007: 321). It is the set of ideologies that an organisation’s leader has, according to existing theories on the subject, which will direct how the culture is developed and what ideals and values are encouraged (Ashkanasy et al. 2000: 262).

In order to maintain the cultural embedding and ensure the right culture is developed at both the overall level and among the developing subculture framework, it is then up to the leader and management to ensure some types of control mechanisms are in place over the tangible and intangible aspects of the organisation, including the “(1) organizational structure and design, (2) organizational procedures and systems, (3) the design of buildings and physical space, (4) stories and myths regarding important people and events, and (5) formal statements of organizational philosophies and missions” (Miner 2007: 321).

A similar school contends that the notion of organisational culture is based on the premise that people within an organisation act out their roles and responsibilities in response to how they define the concept of work and how their organisation rewards or punishes that definition of work, which then determines how they respond to those cultural beliefs (Chan 2000: 83; Alvesson 1993: 118). As such, managers would need to shape their organisational culture in such a way to help influence their workers’ definition of the concept of work so that they can maximise their talent and increase productivity in order to achieve their objectives. Again, this returns to the notion of cultural embedding where the management and leadership must imbue this culture into each individual within their organisation to influence beliefs and behaviours (Chan 2000: 83).

Because many of the concepts involved in culture tend to be intangible and somewhat hidden, including beliefs and values that may be hard to discern or articulate, the available management theories contend that it is up the leadership to take up the cause and communicate what the values and beliefs mean on a regular and consistent basis as part of the embedding process (Bush 2003: 160; Smircich 1985: 58). Additionally, the theories contend that leadership must also take up the cause of culture by creating and encouraging specific rituals and ceremonies, such as reward programmes, employee meetings, and other tactics that are designed to reinforce the values and beliefs of the organisations (Bush 2003: 161).

Effective intervention by leadership in an organisation can help adjust the culture to where it should be in order to meet strategic objectives. Theorists believe that leadership can enact this type of cultural shift through consensus building with the organisational members, focusing on trust and relationship-building both internally and externally, directing high levels of communication and feedback throughout the organisation, providing the necessary training and knowledge transfer, and, most importantly, leading by example (Deal and Kennedy 1982: 189). These tactics by management are particularly essential for larger organisations that may have subcultures, including those with multiple locations, which may need to change or adapt to an overall organisational shift in strategy or beliefs, such as a movement to an environmentally sensitive culture or a culture that is more customer-focused.

Conclusions

It is important to remember that, more often than not, theory is one thing and practice is something that is usually entirely different because it involves the dynamics of the real world as well as a wide range of human personalities, behaviours, and leadership styles that make organisational culture into its own specific process within a wide array of organisations. However, these theories provide a foundation for organisations to learn how to adapt their behaviours and beliefs to better achieve their performance goals and strategic objectives.

It is the leadership that sets the tone and shapes the cultural structure just like the leader of a country convinces the majority of its citizens to uphold certain beliefs and values. So, too, will those managing the masses within an organisation as they are responsible for guiding how work is perceived—and this can be in a positive or negative way—which then determines how those within the culture will enact it with each other, customers, and other stakeholders. Leading the way must be the head of the organisation along with the entire management team who can articulate and reward the behaviours and beliefs that they see as their ideal organisational culture, helping those within the organisation better understand the types of tangible and intangible components are essential for success.

References

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Schein, E.H. (1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2nd Edition. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass.

Sims, R.R. (2002). Managing Organizational Behavior. Westport, Connecticut: Quorum Books.

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This work was produced by one of our professional writers as a learning aid to help you with your studies

For the United States, Japan and China, evaluate how approaches to managing people differ and how these differences can be explained by cultural context.
Introduction

In this international age of business where firms operate in many different parts of the globe, it is important to note that approaches to management may differ across cultures. In setting up a new office in, for example, China or Japan, potential managers should seek to adapt to the different cultural practices of the host country in order to better manage their workforce and achieve productivity.

In this essay, we shall, firstly, discuss methods of measuring key dimensions of culture, and then using said dimensions, look at the different management styles between three countries; China, Japan and the US, currently the three largest economies in terms of GDP, and seek to determine how each approach is shaped by the unique cultural contexts of each country.

Measuring Key Dimensions of Culture

In order to measure the potential effects of culture on the behaviour of said culture’s firms and managers, Geert Hofstede (2001), while working for IBM in the late 70s and early 80s, identified six key dimensions of culture that could be measured through use of survey data and indexed values, namely;

Time Orientation (Long Term vs Short Term); a measure of the extent to which each society values history, heritage and tradition – whether it prefers to uphold traditional values and is more resistant to new ideas and technology (Long Term Orientation) or whether it is more fluid, less focussed on the past and more open to change (Short Term Orientation);

Power Distance (High vs Low), which measures how well the society in question handles uneven distributions of power; whether it is generally accepted and understood as a fact of life (high power distance) or whether it is held to be deeply unfair, unnatural, and something to be railed against (low power distance);

Individualism vs Collectivism; a measure of the extent to which a sense of community and collective responsibility exists, and whether it is thought to be more important than individualist beliefs and desires. Individualist societies tend to value independence, privacy and personal fulfilment, while collectivist societies tend to value group interdependence and a repression of personal ambition when it is misaligned with communal values;

Uncertainty Avoidance (Weak vs Strong), which measures the extent to which each society is comfortable dealing with risk, uncertainty and ambiguity –societies with high degrees of uncertainty avoidance tend to be highly regulated and value careful planning and structure, while societies with low degrees of uncertainty avoidance tend to be more pragmatic, and accept change and risk as factors of life;

Masculinity vs Femininity; a measure of societal gender differentiation – in ‘masculine’ cultures, gender roles are highly differentiated and society as a whole places higher values on competition, ambition, and personal achievement whereas in ‘feminine’ societies gender roles are less starkly defined and more equal, and society tends to place higher values on relationship building, modesty and group harmony (Hofstede and Minkov, 2010).

The US

American society traditionally has a tendency to value individualism and personal freedoms – indeed, such ideals can be seen in the idea of ‘The American Dream’, which postulates that anyone can achieve great wealth and success through individual hard work and determination. With regard to the Hofstede (2001) dimensions of cultural influence;

Source: Gallant (2013)

The United States scores low on the measure of Power Distance, suggesting that American culture is generally intolerant of uneven distributions of power and prefers to see all men as equal (as is laid out in the American Declaration of Independence). It also scores low on Time Orientation, suggesting US society prefers to embrace change and adapt to new ideas rather than sticking to more traditional approaches. It scores quite highly on Masculinity vs Femininity, which is perhaps a reflection of the traditional American respect for competition and ambition. Unsurprisingly, it scores very highly in the measure of Individualism vs Collectivism, a reflection of the deeply held belief in individual freedoms and independence which has been a mainstay of American culture since the war of independence.

This strong sense of individualism is reflected in the American approach to management. Generally, American managers are expected to deal with employees as individuals, rather than as a collective – the ‘open door’ approach to management, where employees are free to approach and discuss issues, suggestions and ideas with upper management, is a uniquely American approach to management that has gained traction in other parts of the world (Laurent, 2006) as it allows employees to feel that their ideas and opinions are valued by those higher up the corporate ladder. American managers are often viewed as facilitators, helping employees to develop personal talents and understanding the individual strengths and weaknesses of those they oversee (Lewis, 2000). Indeed, many American employers use psychometric tests in their hiring process, to determine an applicant’s individual skill level and expected role within the team (Jenkins, 2001). Indeed, skill-based human resource management theories and practices have quickly gained traction in many American firms (Lawler, 1992), reflecting the US cultural practice of embracing new ideas and valuing individual contributions.

There is also a strong sense of competition prevalent in the American approach to management, with promotions tending to go to those who have been seen to ‘rise above the rest’, rather than merely to those who have had the longest tenure (Morris and Pinnington, 2012). The study by Morris and Pinnington (2012) shows that many US manufacturing firms (around a third of those studied, including several of the largest) have an “up-or-out” approach to employee promotion, whereby if an employee has not risen to the next level of the career ladder by a specified time, they are asked to leave the firm. A study by Gibbons and Waldman (1999) shows that workers in US firms who receive promotions early in their career tend to then be promoted quickly to the next level again, suggesting that individual achievement and ambition is both recognised and rewarded.

China

Chinese society is highly influenced by the teachings of Confucius, where all relationships are seen as inherently unequal; both elders and superiors are to be automatically given the utmost respect, and where the group is held to be far more important than the individual (Yum, 2009). This emphasis on group cohesion over individual freedoms was further influenced by the advent of Chinese communism in 1949, and the formation of the People’s Republic of China. While China has become decidedly less socialist economically over the past two decades, owing mainly to Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms of 1978 and 1992, it still remains a communist country, and its socialist ideology is still highly prevalent in everyday life (Yum, 2009)

With regard to the Hofstede (2001) dimensions of cultural influence;

Source: Gallant (2013)

China scores highly on the measure of Power Distance, reflecting the fact that Chinese society inherently accepts uneven power distribution and inequality as a fact of life. Unsurprisingly, China scores very low on the measure of Individualism vs Collectivism, given both the Confucianist and the ruling Communist Party’s emphasis on obedience to the state and group cohesion. It scores relatively highly on the measure of Masculinity vs Femininity, suggesting that gender roles are fairly strictly defined, and that ambition and assertiveness are valued, although mainly when they are used for the benefit of the group/state. China scores very highly on Time Orientation, suggesting that Chinese culture is very traditional and conservative, placing great emphasis on traditional values and methods. They also score very low on Uncertainty Avoidance, suggesting that Chinese society generally does not tolerate uncertainty, and prefers rules and strict structures to be in place.

This can be seen in the fact that Chinese organisations tend to be highly structured and hierarchical, with each individual having a strict distinct role within the organisation (Lewis, 2000). Chinese managers tend to be very autocratic, and most decision-making is made from the top-down with little consultation (Gallant, 2013). Chinese decision making tends to be highly directive, task-oriented and low in cognitive complexity, with little room for interpretation (Martinson and Davison, 2005). Senior managers often have close ties to the Communist Party, and often important business decisions – especially those related to international trade – are scrutinised by party officials before being made (Osland, 1990).

Chinese society emphasises the need for social cohesion, and the avoidance of conflict. Lockett (1988) suggests that the Chinese approach to management is much more people and relationship-oriented, and less performance-driven than in the West. When it comes to promotion, managers tend to promote those who are seen to be trustworthy and reliable rather than those who have sought to ‘rise above the rest’ at the expense of others (which is seen to be harmful to group cohesion), and length of tenure is also a highly important factor in determining promotion prospects (Ding et al, 1997).

Japan

Japanese society in general emphasises politeness and modesty as key virtues to be upheld – in a country with one of the highest urban population densities in the world, such virtues are important in maintaining social cohesion (Clammer, 2011). Japan was essentially closed to the outside world, apart from occasional contact with Dutch traders, until 1854, when the US Navy forced it to open its borders to trade (Totman, 2005). Since then, it has established itself as the third largest economy in the world in terms of GDP, behind the US and China at first and second place, respectively.

With regard to the Hofstede dimensions of cultural influence;

Source: Gallant (2013)

Japan scores low on the measure of Individualism vs Collectivism, suggesting that Japanese society values group cohesion and social relationships over individual desires and accomplishments. Japan scores very highly on the measure of Masculinity vs Femininity, suggesting a high emphasis on fixed gender roles and on competition. It also scores very highly on Uncertainty Avoidance suggesting a high importance placed on the value of structure and rule formation, which can be interpreted as a holdover of its imperial past and its emphasis on a strict social hierarchy (Benedict, 1967). This is unsurprising given the high score for the measure of Time Orientation, which demonstrates Japanese culture is generally rather traditionalist and conservative.

Although Japan scores low on the measure of individualism, Japanese managers tend to invest a great deal in their employees’ skills and development – in many Japanese firms, new employees spend around six to twelve months in training in each division of the company, so they can understand the different aspects of the firm’s organisation (Gallant, 2013). This ties in to the Japanese emphasis on structure and collectivism – each employee knows their role, and understands the role others play in the firm’s activities. Japanese decision making tends to be very collaborative – the Japanese concept of ‘hourenshou’ captures this perfectly. It refers to the necessity of reporting on both your own work and that of others, in ensuring everyone involved in the process is kept informed on how each piece of work is progressing (Clammer, 2011). Often, decisions are made at the middle management level, after consulting with subordinates, and are then passed up the chain to upper-level management to implement. Top management is seen as more of a facilitator than as a strictly authoritarian body. This idea of group responsibility is also upheld in the Japanese concept of ‘genchi genbutsu’ which translates roughly as the need to get one’s hands dirty when one spots a problem, regardless of role or level. Thus, top-level management are often willing to pitch in on a project to help it succeed, even if said project is many levels below (Clammer, 2011).

The Japanese approach to promotion emphasises both seniority, maintenance of group cohesion, and modesty – the higher a manager rises, the more modest and unassuming he needs to appear (Suzuki, 1986). In Japan, it is generally expected for an employee to spend his working life at one company, slowly developing their individual skills and moving up the ranks, reflecting both the Japanese cultural preference for strong structure and organisation and avoidance of ambiguity, and in Japanese society’s preferred long-term approach to Time Orientation.

Conclusion

While links can be drawn between each country’s unique cultural dimensions and its approach to management, care should be taken when applying such knowledge. As with any sweeping generalisations, there are many exceptions to the rule. However, such generalisations can still be useful – as Lewis (2000) notes, “Determining national characteristics is treading a minefield of inaccurate assessment and surprising exception…there is, however, such a thing as a national norm” (Lewis, 2000, p3). So while not every Japanese manager will be modest, self-effacing and open to collaborative decision making; or every Chinese manager autocratic and avoiding of conflict; or every American manager highly competitive and performance-focused; such archetypes are generally successful in each area of cultural context, and the conscientiousness manager would do well to keep these national differences in mind while dealing with one of the aforementioned nations.

References

Benedict, R (1967), The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston

Clammer, J (2011), Contemporary Urban Japan, John Wiley and Sons, Oxford

Ding, D, Fields, D and Akhtar, S (1997), ‘An empirical study of human resource management policies and practices in foreign-invested enterprises in China: the case of Shenzen Special Economic Zone’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Volume 8, Issue 5, pg 595-613

Gallant, M (2013), The Business of Culture: How Culture Affects Management Around the World [Online], Available; http://www.halogensoftware.com/blog/the-business-of-culture-how-culture-affects-management-around-the-world [Accessed 21st May 2014]

Gibbons, R and Waldman, M (1999), ‘A Theory of Wage and Promotion Dynamics Inside Firms’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 144, Issue 4, pg 1321-1358

Hofstede, G (2001), Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviours, Institutions and Organisations across Nations, SAGE Publications, New York

Hofstede, G and Minkov, M (2010), Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, McGraw-Hill, New York

Jenkins, A (2001), Companies’ Use of Psychometric Testing and the Changing Demand for Skills: A Review of the Literature, [Online], Available; http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19541/1/Companies_use_of_psychometric_testing_and_the_changing_demand_for_skills_A_review_of_the_literature.pdf [Accessed 21^st May 2014]

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Lewis, R (2000), When Cultures Collide: Managing Successfully Across Cultures, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London

Lockett, M (1988), ‘Culture and the Problems of Chinese Management’, Organisation Studies, Volume 914, pg 475 – 496

Martinson, M and Davison, R (2005), ‘Strategic decision making and support systems: Comparing American, Japanese and Chinese management’, Decision Support Systems, Volume 43, pg 284 – 300

Morris, T and Pinnington, A (2012), ‘Promotion to Partner in Professional Service Firms’, Human Relations, Volume 51, January, pg 3-24

Osland, G (1990), ‘Doing Business in China: A Framework for Cross-cultural Understanding’, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Volume 8, Issue 4, pg 4-14

Suzuki, N (1986), ‘Mid-Career Crisis in Japanese Business Organisations’, Journal of Management Development, Volume 5, issue 5, pg 23-32

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Abstract

The social housing industry continues to struggle in the UK to provide the most appropriate amount of quality housing stock necessary to serve the growing number of citizens that seek these affordable housing options. The existing housing stock has often suffered from poor quality because there has not been the reinvestment in these assets to maintain their quality in terms of health, safety, comfort and environmental concern. Now, with the need to create a decent home standard and fulfil stringent sustainability measures to improve the environmental record of the UK, more attention has turned to the concept of building maintenance management. This aims to create a formalised approach and set of standards that can unify the way in which these houses are maintained and improved for use by needy residents. To look for ways that might offer a formal process for doing so through the building maintenance management concept, this research study aims to critically review of building maintenance management within social housing to determine the best approach. To carry out this research aim, the research study methodology uses a literature-based approach to investigate difference theoretical concepts and a case study approach to examine empirical evidence, including maintenance management in the construction industry, the challenges in asset management, the current state of maintenance management in social housing, and the real world application of how social housing stock is managed. The case studies examine specific housing authorities charged with maintaining social housing as seen through the assistance of their professional building maintenance management companies that deliver a standardised, multi-criteria approach for faster, more efficient delivery of high-quality housing stock. Conclusions focused on the finding that there is no standardised, formal whole life asset management approach that integrates strategy with the perspective that a specific building maintenance management programme could provide cost-effective solutions to help an industry burdened by budget cuts and challenging economic conditions. Recommendations and proposed future research endeavours were also developed.

Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Background and Research Rationale

As a long-held programme in the UK, social housing is a term which makes reference to housing which is managed and supplied by Local Authorities (LA), housing associations, and various other organisations throughout the United Kingdom (SHARE, 2011). Also known as council housing, the homes are often found within council estates or clustered areas of homes overseen by voluntary organisations that are charged with managing and providing the housing to qualified candidates (SHARE, 2011). The last few years have seen a sharp rise in the demand for these homes as more people fall below the poverty line and cannot afford rent or ownership on a private basis (Hills, 2007).

In recent years, more attention has been made to ensure that these homes are of a decent standard so that even those without funds have the right to enjoy comfortable, safe, and healthy accommodations whether they come from a voluntary organisation or that are now even supplied by a private landlord (SHARE, 2011). Improvements have been made as reports show that social housing is now “more likely to meet the new ‘decent homes’ standard than private rented housing, particularly for disadvantaged households” (Hills, 2007: 9).Yet, there is still a policy discourse in place that relates to the public and even government perception about those in need of social housing that slants toward ‘individual responsibility’ rather than just receiving social housing (Haworth & Manzi, 1999). This attitude borders on animosity that spills over into the management of social housing that acts as though it is an additional burden to maintain these properties on top of providing them rather than see the asset value to maintaining them (Haworth & Manzi, 1999).

There are also significant challenges that remain before the objective has been met to provide all citizens in the UK with decent homes no matter what their income because of the lack of housing stock and the poor quality of what is often available (SHARE, 2011). Just in 2000, it was reported that 1.5 million homes in the UK did not qualify as a decent home (SHARE, 2011). The reports also show that those in social accommodation are actually more likely to feel dissatisfied with the experience due to the fact that houses are not repaired or upgraded in a timely manner (Hills, 2007).

Because the budget and financial means have not been available to undertake new social housing stock, the existing stock becomes more important than ever before and, therefore, the need to maintain these houses to last over the longer term has as well (Hills, 2007). As the problem grows, the government and organisations involved in housing, including the construction industry, are beginning to pay attention to the problem with the lack of decent social housing (Chanter & Swallow, 2008). Despite the understanding that maintenance must be addressed, it is still not looked upon fondly because it is thought to consumer 40 to 50 per cent of an operating budget but, at the same time, is the most controllable of all expenses if addressed appropriately through planning (Mather, 2010). As such, there is a growing understanding that the process of building maintenance management need to be more formalised within the social housing sector in order to achieve the decent homes standard (Changer & Swallow, 2008). With this need, there is a rationale to research the factors involved, including challenges, opportunities, and proposed solutions to assist with the process of creating a model that can effectively achieve a higher standard of social housing in the UK.

In conducting a research study on this topic, there is an opportunity to expand the knowledge base available on a subject that does have considerable literature but not many solutions that have been enacted from the building maintenance management side of the social housing dilemma. By looking into how maintenance is perceived and incorporated in the social housing environment, this may provide some new insights on how it could be more effectively incorporated into the overall asset management framework that is overseeing how social housing is managed and provided to those that need it throughout the UK. And, with the uneven delivery of quality social housing and formalised building maintenance management programmes, there is additional rationale for conducting a specific research study into this area of housing research.

1.2 Research Aim and Objectives

The research aim is to critically review of building maintenance management within social housing to determine the best approach. The research objectives are to:

Evaluate maintenance management in the construction industry.

Critically assess the challenges in asset management.

Determine current state of maintenance management in social housing.

Understand the real world application of how social housing stock is managed.

1.3 Research Methodology

This research study uses a qualitative framework because the focus is on a social issue that does not need to be quantified in any way but must be approached in a way that assesses the intangible concepts involved (Tellis, 1997). The issue of social housing involves social, economic, and political issues that are not necessarily alleviated or addressed by simply quantifying the problem and may involve aspects that are not easily disseminated. To frame the research study, the qualitative tools include a literature review format as well as a case study that addresses local councils and how they are managing or maintaining social housing stock. Both qualitative tools provide a way to explore the concepts on a theoretical and empirical level, creating new levels of insight through identifiable patterns that arise from the evidence collected (Tellis, 1997).

There are advantages and limitations to using a literature review and case study approach, which focuses entirely on secondary research. First, the advantages are that these tools help to generate a picture of the issues, challenges, needs, opportunities and solutions to a social problem by creating a wider picture of the evidence. This is in contrast to using a research tool that is focused on primary data and that could be limited by narrow or biased opinions (Yin, 1993). Second, reliance on secondary sources in the literature review and case study are time and cost-effective research strategies because they do not require as many resources as would be demanded by a primary research focus (Yin, 1993). Third, the use of two different research tools – literature review-based study and case study – offer a way to raise the level of validity by expanding the number of sources and information to deliver a more balanced and diverse approach to the findings that may not be possible from primary research where there are so many things that could be open to interpretation or misrepresentation, thereby impacting the results (Tellis, 1997).

In terms of data collection, the information was gathered by referring to journal articles, online sources, documents, reports, surveys and books that focused on housing management, social housing, facilities, management and building maintenance management. These were also key terms used to locate the appropriate literature that aligned with the research aim and objectives. The information was then segmented into key concepts for further analysis and then linked together in a way that presented the connections and barriers between the various areas of building maintenance management and social housing.

In addressing research limitations that arise from this research framework, the researcher noted limitations with time and available data as potential issues. While the ability to gather more data in a shorter time is one of the advantages to this strategy, there are still time limitations in reading, collecting, and assessing all available research, especially when there appears to be a considerable amount of information available. In addition, the type of available data may not have been created or intended for the specific research aim and objectives of this study, so there may be limitations in terms of the conclusions that can be drawn from what is available. A further assessment as to how these potential research limitations have impacted the findings are found in the final chapter of this research study.

Chapter 2: An Evaluation of Maintenance Management in the Construction Industry

To begin the exploration of social housing and building maintenance management, this chapter explores the current strategies in place around the concept of maintenance management as it applies to the construction industry.

2.1 Maintenance Defined

The general term of maintenance has been defined many ways. In offering one definition that summarises many of those ideas, maintenance involves “re-installing physical condition to a specific standard” and “preventing further deterioration or failure (Dept. of Public Works, 1999: 3). There are many diversions where some definitions of maintenance include the idea of refurbishment and upgrades done to fulfil certain requirements whilst other organisations do not include this as part of the scope of maintenance (Dept. of Public Works, 1999).

2.2 Maintenance Management Defined

Maintenance management is a concept that was conceived from within the manufacturing industry that was then adopted by the construction trade. The objectives associated with maintenance management can also vary just like the definition of maintenance. For instance, a public department in Queensland, Australia set its own very specific set of maintenance management objectives, including the idea of linking it with continual improvement processes for asset planning and management, risk management processes, and strategic objectives (Dept. of Public Works, 1999). This particular example has also emphasised the value of finding key maintenance service providers that could deliver on these objectives and fill in the voids in skills and expertise in maintenance management (Dept. of Public Works, 1999). Other perceptions of maintenance management for buildings focuses on making them fit for use in terms of health and safety, the ability to help the structure retain its value, and the ability to actually increase its quality and value (El-Haram & Horner, 2002).

2.3 Types of Maintenance Management

There are two primary types of maintenance management, namely planned and unplanned. Planned maintenance management is defined as a system where all work is planned – pre-planned or planned during the execution stage (Taylor, 2003; Dept. of Public Works, 1999). The advantage to this type of maintenance management is that “pre-planning insures needed parts, materials and skills are available” (Taylor, 2003: 1). It should have a combination of preventative and predictive measures to minimise unplanned repairs (Taylor, 2003). Unplanned maintenance management is essentially maintenance that must be performed when equipment or a structure unexpectedly breaks down, has created a safety hazard, or led to some other type of low-quality environment that impacts the overall environment (PEMMS, 2012).

There is also reactive and proactive maintenance management. Whilst reactive maintenance involves taking care of repairs in the event of breakdown (Zhang et al., 2009), the concept of maintenance move toward effective management when Japanese engineers looked to the idea of preventative maintenance by making observations and taking actions in advance of a breakdown (TPM Online, 2011). It was intended to decrease downtime, but it also led to an increase in costs that made it unpopular when it was first introduced and that even has its sceptics today (TPM Online, 2011). Part of the issue with preventative maintenance is the idea of replacing parts, equipment, or materials when they could potentially last longer (TPM Online, 2011).

After this concept came that of productive maintenance, which was intended to alleviate the costs and concerns by formalising maintenance as a technical skill and as a continuous improvement process (TPM Online, 2011). Reliability-Centred Maintenance (RCM) is another dimension of maintenance management that is focused on making improvements at the operating and procedural level to ensure proper working order to machines, tools, and materials to maximise the capital costs of those assets and retain their value by evaluating risk for breakdown and creating a standardised minimum maintenance level (Pride, 2010). As an engineering framework, it has been used primarily for machinery applications but can be applied to other maintenance environments (Pride, 2010).

Maintenance management can also be defined by its many stages or steps. According to Mather (2010), six fundamental steps have been identified. These start with establishing a certain set of rules and guides that formalises the inclusion of maintenance into the process of overall operations management (Mather, 2010). This can be done through a paper-based or automated system that then links to the next step of defining all work processes involved in operations so that there is a better understanding of how a control system for maintenance management could be incorporated into a system (Mather, 2010). Another stage in the process is to have a specific strategy for equipment, which is part of both an implementation and operational stage that is dependent upon certain criteria like the current state of equipment, structures, and materials (Mather, 2010). From there, the next stage is to design exception and functional reports that create a hierarchical structure of reporting and tracking of maintenance needs and concerns (Mather, 2010). The last stage involves tying all maintenance management activities to the company’s strategic direction by integrating it with all current and future goals (Mather, 2010).

In relation to a maintenance management programme tied directly to asset performance management, Damm (2005) provided a maintenance approach model where each stage is viewed as an evolutionary process that can be incorporated to enhance the ability of maintenance to serve an organisation in a way that is both productive and cost-effective. Stage one is reactive repair where work is done as things break whilst stage two is demand maintenance, which involves more planning (Damm, 2005). Stage three is then preventative maintenance where equipment is managed by looking directly at those issues or amount of time that could precipitate repairs so that they are addressed prior to occurring (Damm, 2005). From there, stage four is predictive maintenance, which is based on statistical analysis wherein historical data is analysed to predict when breakdowns or maintenance would be needed in the future (Damm, 2005). Stage five is reliability centred maintenance “where engineering based maintenance programmes are complemented with operational performance trends to ‘push’ the maintenance cycles to the max within the context of an overall system risk assessment” (Damm, 2005: 1). Finally, stage six is the most advanced stage in the maintenance management system and is known as life cycle management where the focus becomes more comprehensive around maximising the useful life of what is considered an asset, whether that be a machine or a structure (Damm, 2005).

Damm (2005) also identified three key elements that characterise a ‘fully evolved maintenance management system,’ which include a performance management framework, practices and processes, and data and technology. The performance management framework is identified as “a clear set of asset specific strategies, objectives, initiatives and goals, where meaningful targets can be established and progress measured” (Damm, 2005: 2). The practices and processes are “a set of common work methods and asset specific management practices with a target of implementing defined industry best practices” (Damm, 2005: 2). Finally, the data and technology component are defined as “an integrated set of information, engineering, and communications technologies use to gather, store, interpret and report performance data and information” (Damm, 2005: 2).

2.4 Construction Industry and Maintenance Management

The construction industry has a significant role to play in building maintenance management in terms of how it has evolved and responded to various economic cycles, including maintenance during recessionary periods and boom year construction periods. Despite the influence, there have also been some noticeable conflicts between the construction industry and maintenance management, according to available research. For instance, Chanter & Swallow (2008: 19) noted the lack of value provided to maintenance management by the construction industry: “This manifests itself in a general lack of understanding of both its scope and its significance by all parties to the building procurement, construction, and management processes. In consequence, the backlog of repair and maintenance work required to bring the country’s building stock to a minimum acceptable level continues to grow at an unacceptable rate.”

The construction industry must address and reconcile the fact that it often faces numerous factors when looking at ways to handle the costs involved with housing maintenance. This is especially true as research suggests that the costs associated with building maintenance continue to rise and consumer a larger percentage of the budget (El-Haram & Horner, 2002). These costs are found to be primarily affected and dependent upon certain factors, such as human aspects, building characteristics, the way and frequency of the building maintenance, government policies that guide building maintenance standards and the related costs (El-Haram & Horner, 2002).

The UK government has put pressure on the construction industry to do their share in achieving the goals and objectives for the decent home standard, which has dictated that homes must be in a reasonable state of repair, have modern facilities and services, and provides a reasonable degree of thermal comfort (CLG, 2006). To achieve this, the construction industry must be relied upon to use their expertise and training to quickly upgrade and refurbish a social housing stock that is often considered very old, in disrepair, and lacks modern amenities that make them decent (CLG, 2006). Often, the construction industry is challenged by its scope of what building maintenance means in terms of their responsibilities because they must consider the government standards, tenants’ wishes, the social housing landlords’ expectations and environmental considerations (CLG, 2006). However, beyond a somewhat reactionary building maintenance framework described here, the construction industry is also charged with having the ability to deliver a higher level of sophisticated building maintenance that includes predicting future progress and deterioration, the impact of specific investment and funding cycles to maintain predictive and preventative maintenance strategies (CLG, 2006).

Chapter 3: A Critical Review of the Challenges in Asset Management

Asset management has been defined as “strategic discipline which gives rigour and accountability to the way organisations decide” on a number of areas, including what to invest in and when, what are the most critical assets, what risks need to be managed, how performance should be measured and what improvements must be made to maintain or improve that asset (Lloyd, 2010). The asset management framework holds all these decisions together so that an organisation has a way to look at the whole picture of what may need to be done within an operation or a structure (Lloyd, 2010). This chapter covers the many challenges in asset management in relation to maintenance in terms of both physical challenges and perceptions that hinder effective management of assets.

3.1 Perspective Challenges

One of the biggest problems is how the idea of maintenance is viewed, which is as a problem rather than something that is simply part of taking care of an asset and ensuring that it keeps or increases its value. As one source explained, “Property Maintenance has long been viewed by many as a necessary evil; something that, grudgingly, has to be done; a source of complaints from customers; a headache for the Board or Council and a constant source of gripes for tenants” (NHMF, 2004: 1).

With this perception, the concept of asset management cannot be properly fulfilled. In order to achieve a proper level of asset management and therefore achieve the intended standard of decent property standard, the right perception of asset management is that it “looks beyond the traditional property management approach of bricks and mortar. Successful asset management requires a thorough understanding of all issues that could affect a property; the physical, structural, economic and demographic needs of a property and its surrounding community” (NHMF, 2004: 1).Within the area of perspective challenges is the idea of conflicting goals related to financial targets, different timelines and forecasting conclusions, and contrasting approaches to work toward asset management on a network versus project viewpoint (Vanier, 2001).

3.2 Fundamental Operations Challenges

Beyond the perspective challenges, there are also fundamental operations challenges that exist with asset management (Lloyd, 2010). As one source noted, “For most organisations, the adoption of asset management will mean developing mechanisms to enhance, encourage and facilitate coordination between previously distinct functions” (Lloyd, 2010: xix). Overall understanding of asset management is often weak, which creates challenges in terms of making smart decisions and investments. Technical challenges include determining exactly what they own, the true value or worth of those buildings, their current condition and expected service life, and what types of repairs should be the priority over others (Zhang et al., 2009). Nath (2009) also identified specific challenges with asset management tied to lack of information, integration, technology, balance and risk. The result is miscommunication and incompetence, which further exacerbates these challenges and leads to less support (Nath, 2009).

Like maintenance management, the problem lies in the lack of a formal set of tools to collect, assess, and track data about properties to better understand when and where maintenance might be needed in advance so as to cost effectively uphold the value of these assets (NHMF, 2004). This includes the inability to model different scenarios in relation to repair and maintenance because there lacks the resources to create such a tool box (NHMF, 2004). For instance, if owners and operators of buildings incorporated such tools as Building Information Modelling (BIM) or GIS into their asset management processes, they could “facilitate data collection, processing, and display” as well as “integrate asset mapping with project management and budgeting tools so maintenance, inspections, and expenses can be accounted for in the same place” (Zhang et al., 2009: 13). This challenge is also linked to the fact that maintenance management may not be integrated within the overall asset management system again due to the aforementioned perception, making it less efficient and reinforcing the opinion that it is a ‘necessary evil’ rather than essential tool (NHMF, 2004). This includes both process and operational integration, including existing “computerized maintenance management systems, geographic information systems and corporate legacy systems” (Vanier, 2001: 35).

3.3 Overcoming Barriers

In order to maintain a consistently high value on these assets, there are many barriers that can get in the way, including the characteristics of the tenants and their viewpoint of the care and concern of the building (El-Harman & Horner, 2002). There are also political and regulatory measures that have put greater pressures on the construction industry, including energy costs and sustainability measures (El-Harman & Horner, 2002). Budget constraints due to economic pressures, such as lack of financing and investors, are further challenging the construction industry and leading them to minimise their focus on maintenance as an integral aspect of social housing. Further challenges are the idea that the construction trade is fully aware of the consequences of what could occur if they decide to cut out maintenance, which is greater costs in the future (Horner et al., 1997). However, they are willing to risk those costs in light of saving money in the short term (Horner et al., 1997).

Other research has identified critical success factors that play a role in overcoming building maintenance management challenges, which can help address all perspectives involved – from the customer to the internal to the financial (Zulkarnain et al., 2011). These critical success factors have some patterns that overlap perspectives, including customer satisfaction and complaints, service quality, staff development, technology capability and asset utilisation (Zulkarnain et al., 2011). These factors are embedded into a larger framework known as a whole life asset management approach to maintenance management that addresses the challenges listed in this chapter and provides a way to spend less whilst getting more with each maintenance action, managing risks in order to not waste resources, taking a whole systems approach rather than an equipment or component approach and ensuring all stakeholders share the same perspective (Lloyd, 2010).To adopt this approach and work through the asset management challenges, research has recommended restructuring organisations to work as a whole life asset management model (Lloyd, 2010).

Chapter 4: Maintenance Management in Social Housing

Maintenance management, as linked to an overall asset management system, has become increasingly important in relation to social housing because UK government initiatives are driving the goal for more efficient and economical means of creating high-quality housing stock (Kempton & Chapman, 2003). Yet, the literature suggests ongoing challenges with making this work in a way that leads to the higher social housing stock. Problems identified include an ongoing short-term perspective about the social housing assets by those in charge of them despite being directed to take a more long-term strategic approach to maintaining these assets (Kempton & Chapman, 2003). Additionally, there is a large discrepancy in the standard of quality in regards to maintenance management across the geographical area of the UK, reflecting the fact that there is no formal framework in place to guide the maintenance management process (Kempton & Chapman, 2003).

4.1 Key Challenges

There is considerable maintenance management that goes into taking care of the UK’s sizable social housing stock, including repairs and improvement work to bring it up to a certain standard as the homes age or undergo abuse from tenants (Audit Commission, 2000). The level of care and uptake also varies widely across the UK in terms of performance and quality due to a number of reasons, including uneven resources, ill-conceived maintenance programmes, and lack of control and oversight when it comes to repairs (Audit Commission, 2009). Other problems include a lack of participation by tenants and leaseholders in the process, no use of performance management tools and basic monitoring or feedback mechanisms as well as a lack of value for money when establishing letting contracts (Audit Commission, 2009).

As part of the maintenance requirements issued by the UK government for social housing has been for landlords to provide what are known as Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), which is intended for the potential tenant to understand what type of energy efficiency upgrades have been completed on the housing and ensure that it is decent (Macphail, 2009). However, the challenge has been for landlords to be able to gather the energy data, understand how to do so and how it needs to be used and presented, and decided on how this should be integrated with other maintenance management responsibilities that should be undertaken (Macphail, 2009). This is one example of the challenges faced with social housing in terms of making it both decent and now fulfilling the UK government’s energy initiatives.

The challenges associated with achieving this by social landlords was documented in a comprehensive set of interviews conducted by researchers at the University of Greenwich (Cooper & Jones, 2009). The conclusions from the interviews with social landlords about the various responsibilities and challenges they face were that the government’s sustainability agenda is beginning to impact the scope of what social housing maintenance managers must do and make decisions on in regards to social, economic, and environmental aspects of this new agenda (Cooper & Jones, 2009).

4.2 Integration Approach to Challenges

Despite the challenges, new models of maintenance for social housing have been proposed that are aimed at integrating sustainability objectives into the decent homes initiative in order to fulfil all levels of responsibility placed on the social housing sector. The University of Greenwich presented a performance-based sustainability housing maintenance model that linked policy/strategy, needs identification, causes, actions, solutions and evaluations/feedback (Cooper & Jones, 2009).

This level of integration has been viewed as the only identifiable means of addressing all the factors and issues that have now become embedded

This work was produced by one of our professional writers as a learning aid to help you with your studies

General Introduction

Trends are changing universally. In Malaysia, a lot of the entertainment is chosen for people to spend their leisure time. Now a days, the standard of living and the stress from work and school is much higher than in previous years, so people now need time to relax just to release the stress.

People now a days know how to plan and enjoy their leisure time. There are a lot of ways one can spend their leisure time, they can go to the cinema, traveling or may be reading. Gambling is considered a leisure activity. In this generation, the top most preferred leisure activity by young adults is to go clubbing.

In Malaysia, clubbing is one of the famous night entertainments available for those who are between the ages of 18 to 26. This type of entertainment is mushrooming quickly, especially in the capital city, Kuala Lumpur. However, the clubs in Malaysia are not spread over a big area. They have specific spots for clubbing, so along these streets are filled with night clubs, bars and discos. Jalan Doraisamy, Jalan P Ramlee, Jalan Tun Razak, and Jalan Sultan Ismail are the few street names on which clubs are on a stretch. These places are where you find the people who are fascinated by night life, a lot of foreigners are found along these streets as well.

People visit these places not only because they want to club, but also because they want to relax after a long day or week. Some tourists are curious about the night life in Malaysia. Some tourists don’t get to see these places because they come with children, and such places aren’t suitable for children. Rush hour is another reason why people would prefer to come to the bar in the evenings during happy hour, just to avoid the traffic.

As time passed, clubs, pubs and night clubs with different themes, music and set ups starting opening around these areas. As a result the competition of the nightclub market became bigger and bigger and this is why many club owners joined the market for a while and before too long they had to close down because the competition is too tight.

However, Asian Heritage Row is a row of clubs that is located on Jalan Doraisamy. The road is full of clubs facing each other. This dissertation will focus more on the factors that contribute to the success of Asian Heritage Row. The title is “The factors influencing the success of Asian Heritage Row”

The dissertation will be divided into 3 parts, the 1^st part covers about the entertainment industry, nightlife industry as well as the nightlife scene in Malaysia. The 2^nd part covers the Analysis of the clubs in Asian Heritage Row out of which 8 of the managers were interviewed. The 3 ^rd part will be the recommendation of the research.

Objectives:

The Factors that influence the success of Asian Heritage Row?

Define Success in the content of Asian Heritage Row?

Answer the significance of the factors

In order to achieve these objectives, primary and secondary data will be collected for the methodology. For the primary data qualitative data was used by conducting interviews with 8 of the managers of clubs in Asian Heritage Row. The secondary data was collected from the internet and journal articles. The secondary data is used to back up the statements.

Part 1 Theoretical Framework
1.1 Entertainment

According to Wikipedia (2008) the word Entertainment is an activity designed to give pleasure or relaxation to an audience (although in the case of a computer game the “audience” may be only one person). The audience may participate in the entertainment passively as in watching opera or a movie, or actively as in computer games.

Hughes (2000) identified the word ‘entertainment’ is used to include a wide variety of activities such as watching television or playing computer games at home, listening to music, visiting cinema, watching sports, visiting theme parks, and going to discos. Furthermore, Hughes (2000) classified types of entertainment as:

1.2 Night life entertainment

According to Wikipedia (2007), nightlife is the collective term for any entertainment that is available and more popular from the late evening into the early hours of the morning. It includes the pubs, night clubs, bars, live music, cabaret, small theatres, small cinemas, shows, and sometimes restaurants a specific area may have (defined here as pubs, bars, cafes, and night clubs). Nightlife entertainment is essentially edgier than daytime amusements and usually more oriented to young adults.

“Studies have shown that the average person will spend three to four hours per weekend in an entertainment environment and will spend an average of 20 to 50 dollars in that timeframe. This trend also shows no signs of declining.” (http://findarticles.com)

The night club business isn’t a simple business that can be run by anyone; it is not as simple as selling alcohol or just thinking about the latest trend in youths. It is way much more complex than that. Starting up a night club needs a lot of financial investments. The success of this business depends on what are the company’s goals and the things you could do to make the guest happy that ensures they will come back.

“Most people who get into the nightclub industry do it because they want to have a nightclub and enjoy it and it’s at night, said co- owner Dalton Alford. They overlook the most important factor, and the reason nightclubs do live is that the office during the day is up and operational. You seldom see it.” (http://findarticles.com)

1.2.1 Different types of Night life entertainment

When most people hear the word night life they think of only a club, while actually there are a few types of clubs. They have different names; some are called Bars while others have different names. These places differ because of the facilities they provide in their establishments. The target market to these establishments differs as well. These are the different types of night life entertainment.

1.2.1.1 Bar

The Wikipedia (2007) describes bar as a business that serves drinks, especially alcoholic beverages such as beer, liquor, and mixed drinks, for consumption on the premises. Bars provide stools or chairs for the patrons along tables or raised counters. Some bars have entertainment on a stage, such as a live band, comedians, go-go dancers, a floor show or strippers. Bars that are part of hotels are sometimes called long bars or hotel lounges

There are as much bars as there are night clubs in Malaysia, these bars usually only serves drinks and light snacks, there are no dance floors. Some of them have live band performance while others have a DJ (Disc Jockey) playing the music. Most of the people who visit these bars are business men from overseas as well as local ones who need a drink after a long day at work.

1.2.1.2 Discotheques

The word has been shortened to “Disco”. The term refers to a style of music that is influenced by Funk, Soul Music and salsa. The main attraction in a disco is the dance floor. People go there to dance. The songs played are from recorded sources. Live band is also played from time to time. This is played to entertain the customers when the songs are not played from the recorded sources (www.disco-disco.com).

1.2.1.3 Pubs

Originally called public house but now known as “pubs”, this drinking establishment was originally found in the United Kingdom and Ireland but now found globally. Pubs used to be located in small English towns.

Pubs are social places for the sale and consumption of mainly alcoholic beverages. Most pubs offer a wide range of beers, wines, spirits and alcoholic beverages. In the 1930s the Anglo French writer Hillarie Belloc penned the following cautionary warning” when you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England”

1.2.1.4 Night Clubs

A Nightclub is a drinking, dancing, and usually similar to bars, pubs or taverns, by the inclusion of a dance floor and a DJ booth, where a DJ plays recorded dance and pop music. The music in nightclubs is either live bands or, more commonly a mix of songs played by a DJ through a powerful PA system. Most clubs or club nights cater to certain music genres, such as house music, garage, Hip-Hop, or salsa.

Most of the clubs, bars, and lounges in Malaysia are categorized as night clubs. This is because the clubs have all the criteria that match a night club. Their main customers are young adults commonly known as youths.

1.3 Night Life in Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur being the capital of Malaysia is a developing city with high rise buildings, shopping malls, restaurants, highways and entertainment spots. Out of their entertainment spots, a big portion of them are Night clubs, karaoke bars, pubs, lounges, jazz bars, discos, wine bars, and different types of restaurants. These are all scattered all around the city.

Being a Muslim country, authorities enforce a 3am closure ruling for nightspots in Kuala Lumpur city areas, while clubs and pubs in urban areas in the vicinity of residential estates have to close at 1am. Occasionally, the police will conduct raids on random places to check for illicit drugs, prostitution and other vices of society. However, alcohol is sold freely in Malaysia and the legal drinking age is 21 (as cited in www.kuala-lumpur.ws).

Night life entertainment can be found in a few places in Kuala Lumpur. The clubs, bars and lounges are normally on a stretch along a road. But some of them are scattered elsewhere. The three famous spots that have clubs on a stretch are the Asian Heritage Row, Jalan Sultan Ismail and Bangsar. For pubs and bars are mostly along Hartamas and Bukit Bintang.

1.3.1 Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur

Jalan Bukit Bintang where the entertainment clubs are there is the road adjacent to Starhill. The KL Plaza has numerous lively cafes, bars and pubs. Starting with the Foxx discotheque at the basement until Planet Hollywood that is situated next to Starhill.

1.3.2 Jalan Sultan Ismail and Jalan P. Ramlee

The beauty of these two roads is that it is the intersection point of club central in Kuala Lumpur. Located just opposite of the Shangri-La. It is one of the best places to go clubbing. The clubs are tidily huddled together with some of the best DJ’s performing from week to week. Along this road are not only clubs but there are a few hotels as well. The Concord Hotel and the Equatorial hotel are located there.

1.3.3 Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur

Tucked away in the neighbourhood of Sri Hartamas is an area of business that has blossomed into its nightlife. Ranging from pool, darts, foosball or even wine, you can’t miss these places with their terrific decor and relaxing ambience with lovely alfresco areas and comfortable couches. You can even hang out to watch the football premier league at Hartamas Square. SOULed OUT’s new address has shifted to Sri Hartamas as well.

1.4 Asian Heritage Row

Asian Heritage Row (AHR) runs along Jalan Doraisamy, which is situated just off Jalan Sultan Ismail, next to the Sheraton Imperial Hotel. It is located in the heart of the city and is growing in popularity as a preferred destination for the young and trendy. Three years ago this area near Kampung Baru wouldn’t be such a pleasant site to be seen. Along this road were pre-war houses that were abandoned.

The founder had a mission of turning these old abandoned houses into an entertainment area, whilst maintaining the heritage. That is why the clubs and restaurants in Asian Heritage Row have the design of very old houses. The 80 year old houses have been transformed into a row of elegant and charming restaurants, cafes, bars, and clubs and even have a foot reflexology salon.

In following with the traditions of the city, Asian Heritage Row was developed to encapsulate the city’s past, present and future. As with most great cities of the world, which have their unique cultural and leisure districts (e.g. Montmart in Paris, Soho in New York, Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong and Clark Quay in Singapore) (www.asianheritagerow.com)

1.4.1 The Night Clubs
1.4.1.1 Wine Room

Wine Room as you can see from its name is a lounge that specializes in wine, the wine room has a capacity of 100 people inside, 50 people outside and standing room for another 50. The atmosphere at the Wine Room is relaxed, and is often crowded with local celebrities. They serve light meals such as cheese platter, pizzas and other finger food that are served with a good selection of wines, champagnes, cigars, liquor and imported beers

1.4.1.2 Heritage Mansion

Heritage Mansion aims to provide a different and refreshing lifestyle space for its customers. Till date, there is no food and beverage entertainment venue which is relaxed and chilled out in atmosphere in the weekdays, while it transform its self into a club by weekends. Heritage Mansion is open to selected group of people, which means not everyone can go there. This place is more for elite members of the society.

1.4.1.3 Kristao

Kristao is one of the outlets along Heritage Row and the first restaurant-bar on the street that specializes in Malaccan Portuguese cuisine. It’s a very homey two-floor establishment with an attractive selection of wines, liquor, beers and cocktails. Kristao also has the record of having the longest happy hours, from 11:00am to 9.00pm daily with the kitchen staying open till 1 am with seating for up to 100 people.

1.4.1.4 The Rupee Room

The Rupee Room is all about great music and a friendly atmosphere that gives you a touch of Bollywood. This is the only club along the Asian Heritage Row that plays Indian music. The Rupee Room has just opened in the past year. They are a branch from the rupee room in Singapore

1.4.1.5 Bar Blonde

Bar Blonde, one of the earlier bars to open on Asian Heritage Row. It is particularly designed for events big or small. Bar Blonde plays the music from their live band that performs rather than using a DJ. Bar Blonde has a very unique promotion, blondes can get a drink on the house.

1.4.1.6 The Loft Kuala Lumpur

The Loft Kuala Lumpur was established in January 2005. The Loft is a combination of a Fine Dining, Lounging and Clubbing. They have separated all the 3 into 4 different places.

Upstairs Club Lounge

The Upstairs Club Lounge is spread over what used to be 4 shop lots. This part of the Loft is more into clubbing than lounging or dining. The loft has a stage and a catwalk area in the middle which makes it ideal to hold events in.

Mezza Notte

Mezza Notte is the dining part of The Loft. It is an Italian fine dining restaurant which is equipped with a sushi bar. However the restaurant serves a wide range of wines of the world and cigars as well.

Ye Chine

Ye Chine Restaurant serves authentic Chinese cuisine, including dim sum. The restaurant also has a garden indoor dining area, an island bar and a skylight roof.

Cynna House Lounge

Cynna has a lounge on the exterior and a clubbing area in the interior. It has a reputation of the venue for fine clubbing and VIP service.

1.4.1.7 Palacio

Palacio means ‘Palace’ in Latin. Palacio is a restaurant that specializes in French and Spanish cuisine. There are 3 ambiances in the restaurant. You can experience a fine dinner on the 1st floor, chill out in Palacio’s cozy tapas bar on the ground floor or enjoy sunshine in the Palacio front garden.

1.4.1.8 Bed

Bed is one of the clubs located on the left hand side of the street; it has 2 areas, the 1^st floor and lower floor. The 1^st floor plays a different music from the lower floor. They serve a wide array of liquors, wines, champagnes.

1.4.1.9 Atrium

Atrium, a club that has a stage for a live band to perform as well. They have different days on which the DJ plays and some days when the live band leads the crowd. They serve food as well as beverages.

1.5 Market Segmentation

The Marketing concept calls for understanding customers and satisfying their needs better than the competition. But different customers have different needs, and it is rarely possible to satisfy all customers by treating them alike (www.netmba.com).

In order to cater to all customer’s needs, we need to segment the market into several segments. There are four ways in which you can segment a market:

Geographical segmentation

Geographic segmentation divides the market into different geographical units; they can be neighbourhoods, cities, counties, countries, or world regions such as Europe or South East Asia etc. Such segmentation will seek to identify factors, which should be taken into account in developing appropriate marketing strategies for each area, including Language, Climate, and Lifestyles.

Demographic segmentation

Demographic segmentation divides the market into groups based on demographic variables including age, gender, family size and life cycle.

Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation divides the market into groups based on social class, lifestyle and personality characteristics. It is based on the assumption that the types of products and brands an individual purchases will reflect that persons characteristics and patterns of living.

Behavioural segmentation

Behavioural segmentation divides the market into groups based on their knowledge, attitudes, uses and responses to the product. So if a person is a regular visitor to a club they may be segmented into this segment.

1.6 The factors contributing to the success of nightclubs

There are a lot of factors that contribute to the success of a nightclub. Every nightclub has to try and make their own place unique in their own ways. From the articles that are mentioned below, there are some factors that contribute to the success of night clubs.

1.6.1 Promotion and Special Occasions

Promoting the nightlife establishment is something that all club owners do as this lets people know about the club, special occasions are events that is held once in a while in order to attract customers to the club. The article “What savvy club owners do to make their topless clubs successful while others fail miserably” wrote by Jack Corbett said that “…offers the reasonably prices of alcohol to customers starting from 8 pm to 10 pm buckets of beers specials…” this is an example of happy hour. This is a promotion done by majority of clubs all over the world.

“The main idea is to offer a new entertainment experience night after night. This is the key ingredient for success and profitability, as well as longevity, in the nightclub industry” (http://findarticles.com).

Happy Hour is a type of promotion done by a lot of club owners. Happy hour is the hours of the night in which the club offers discounts on a number of drinks. These hours normally vary from country to country and from club to club. In Malaysia happy hour is from 5pm to 9pm. While in Indonesia it is from 5pm to 8pm. In Australia, the happy hour is from 6pm to 8pm. Firstly as those are the hours in which a club has no business, the cheap drink helps the club to attract customers.

1.6.2 Advertising

Entertainment clubs has to advertise, if they don’t advertise there are a very low percentage of them surviving in the business. Clubs should advertise in magazines. This would create awareness in the customers. Jack Corbett mentioned “…Great review to the competitor while mentioning it all in the magazine believing that any kind of news at all is good news”. Magazines normally recommend clubs to their readers; this will make your club one of the clubs that would be recommended to the readers.

1.6.3 Hiring Staff

Staff hiring is essential to any business, a good staff team would create a good working environment and would make the customers happy. Jack Corbett Mentioned “…feature entertainers are the real professionals in the business.”

1.6.4 Environments and menu

Nightclub & Bar Magazine mentioned “…should doing a lot of special effects and theatre things but you never saw before in the clubs.” This means that clubs should have a special features in them in order to get the customers curious about what would it be like inside. This curiosity will get the customers into the club. The clubs should change the look of their club from time to time so as not to bore the customers.

The menu is something that you should change from time to time as well. This is because right now the trend is to fuse everything together. So bartenders are coming with new and unique ways to draw customer’s attention to the drinks. One example is the flaming. Flaming is when a drink, such as Sambuca, is set alight. The customer then blows out the flames and shots the drink. Another example is when the martini glass is kept below a Galliano bottle and then the bar tender pours the flaming mixture from the top of the Galliano bottle and customers drink it from the martini glass with the help of a straw.

1.6.5 Music and Disc Jockey

From the 60’s to the 70’s the most suggested place to listen to music is at a disco. During those times people liked to dance. Now days even everyone dances because of disco music. This statement is from Is Disco Dead “…I love the disco today; dance music is more alive and disco music has more feelings than today’s dance tracks” this means that is because of the music now a days that teenagers go to the clubs. They go to listen to the music and dance to the beat. So the music of a club really matters to attract customers. The DJ’s job is to control the music. So the DJ playing in the club also is another factor.

1.6.6 Cover Charge and Services

Cover Charge is defined as a fee for entry to an establishment, often it is referred to a bar or a night club. The term “no cover” or “no cover charge” relays that such establishment allows entry at no cost.

From the journals I found on the internet. Tonic Brian Arbuckle, Elissa Ferenbach, Doug Devitre and Frank Lee who did a research regarding clubbing, found that. “…the respondents said they would choose another club if the club charged a cover before entering”, and “…more than seventy percent of the respondents were likely to choose the bar with the lower cover.” This shows that majority of the people like to go to clubs where the cover charge is low. So the cover charge of a club also is another factor that will influence the number of people that comes in the club.

A 1,000-person capacity nightclub will typically accommodate approximately 1,500 people in the five-hour span of operation. A $5 door charge, in addition to a conservative figure of $12.25 collected from each patron in alcohol sales, would generate approximately $30,000 in nightly revenue. (http://findarticles.com)

In every club there must be a server to serve the customers. From the survey taken by Tonic Brian Arbuckle, Elissa Ferenbach, Doug Devitre and Frank Lee found out that “…waitresses do play an important role on how people choose which bar to go to” they play an important role because they are the ones that provide the service.

So the better the service is the more people would want to come to the club. Business men for an example, they prefer for the waitress to come to the table and take the order rather than having to go to the bar to get their drinks. Some servers can also influence the people who choose the bar because of their professionalism. So the service staff play an important role as well.

Part 2 Methods and Findings

One of main areas of the research is the methodology. This is the part where the different methods used to obtain the information as well as the results to the research and the analysis are explained.

The information that is used in this research is primary as well as secondary information. The primary data is obtained from interviews that have been conducted and the secondary data has been gathered from books, journals and websites. However the secondary data is more reliable as it has been verified and published.

Secondary data has been obtained from several different sources such as the internet, newspaper, journals, magazines, college notes etc.

2.1 Research methodology

This section will describe the idea of how data was collected to answer the research questions, methods and techniques used for the data collection and how it was implemented to the research objectives.

The objectives of this study are:

The Factors that influence the success of Asian Heritage Row?

Answer the significance of the factors?

2.1.1 Research Questions

In order for the objectives to be answered, a systematic order of questions is formulated to apply with the objectives.

Objective 1: What are the factors that influence the success of Asian Heritage Row?

Objective 2: how important are the factors that contribute to the success of Asian Heritage Row?

In the research questions, the problematic reasons for this research may be stated. These questions should be answered at the end of the research.

2.1.2 Research Design

According to Rees (1996) & Dingwall et al, (1988), Qualitative research involves broadly stated questions about human experience and reality, studied true sustain contact with people in their natural environment, generating rich, descriptive data that helps us to understand their experience and attitudes.

Rees (1997) emphasizes that rather than presenting the results in the form of statistics, qualitative research produces words in the form of comments and statements. Its aim is to find out people’s feelings and experiences from their own point of view rather than from that of the researcher.

General Conclusion

Part 1 explained entertainment, because Night life is a form of entertainment. There are two types of entertainment, at home and away from home. Nightlife entertainment is entertainment away from home.

Youths are more likely to choose entertainment that are away from home. This is because young people really like going for nightlife entertainment. The history of the night life entertainment in Malaysia was also explained, which highlighted when the first night life in Malaysia opened. The different types of reasons for a night club to be successful were also explained.

As the topic is about Asian Heritage Row, Asian Heritage Row was explained briefly about the clubs that are available there.

Part 1 of my research became a guideline to progress further with the dissertation. Part 2 was started off by explaining the licensing system in Malaysia with the 3 different types of license that are available. In order to be able to answer the research questions, interviews were conducted with Managers of clubs in Asian Heritage Row, to identify the factors leading to its success. Being a Muslim country it was thought that it would be rather complicating for promoting, advertising etc. but surprisingly, the theories that were found out more or less matched the factors of why Asian Heritage had been a successful place.

From the findings that were analysed, the factors leading to the success of Asian Heritage Row suggest that the clubs can still be successful with such high competition, as the competition available brings more people into the general area. The more the people the better it is for business. Besides that, the promotion, advertising and music also act as factors to the success of Asian Heritage Row. It is because of these things that the target market is informed that there are changes or have something different to show your customers.

Customers always want something new so that they are always entertained. The Music in Asian Heritage Row varies from club to club, in fact some clubs play different types of music on different days. The cover charge and service also influences people’s choices in choosing clubs. The cover charge shouldn’t be too expensive as people might find it not worth it but at the same time it shouldn’t be too cheap as that would result in an influx of lower class people.

The service of a club influences the choice of a consumer as well. Service includes the staff, environment and music. If you can give top notch service to your clients, they will for surely come back. Club owners should make sure they change the decor periodically just so that they don’t get bored.

Part 3 recommends what can be done to make Asian Heritage Row a better place, by adding more facilities into the area. Though the area is fully developed, they still haven’t been able to execute making it a very safe place.

During the process this dissertation there have been few limitations. The major limitation faced is lack of information. This is due to the lack of time and when the interviews could be conducted. The managers were too busy with their own work and tried to answer briefly, so it was difficult to ascertain how they really felt. Some of them refused to be interviewed as they didn’t have time. To complete this research again, I would collect the primary data using questionnaires. This is because questionnaires are more accurate as you have more respondents and structured answers when compared to interviews.

This work was produced by one of our professional writers as a learning aid to help you with your studies

The hotel industry has long struggled to establish what truly makes hotel employees motivated and satisfied with their jobs. High employee turnover in the hotel industry is believed to be due to the nature of the work, its low pay, and its long working hours. Thus, to effectively address this turnover problem, employee motivation could be an on-going and critical issue for managers in hotel operations. (Chiang and Jang 2008)

Chitiris (1990, 293) strongly emphasized the importance of motivation by stating that “Motivation is the prime determinant of behaviour at work and that high ability and high levels of job training will not result in high performance if the individual is completely de-motivated or under-motivated at work.”

A review of the literature indicates that there are problems in the hotel industry such as inadequate pay, low job security, limited training and development opportunities, and excessive turnover. (Cheng and Brown 1998; Deery and Shaw 1999; Pizam and Thornburg 2000; Karatepe and Uludag 2007). There are also problems pertaining to unsocial work hours and workloads in the hotel industry. (Karatepe and Sokmen 2006; Rowley and Purcell 2001; Karatepe and Uludag 2007)

The biggest challenge of employee motivation is that employees often motivate themselves, based on their perception of what they want to achieve and how they can achieve it. However, managers who are aware of what their employees want from work can design a work environment that is able to accommodate employees’ needs and desires. At the same time, well-informed managers may be able to avoid common pitfalls that tend to reduce employee motivation. (Simons and Enz 1995)

Riley, Ladkin, and Szivas (2002) cited in Taylor and Davies (2004) that according to the World Tourism Organisation, the world’s largest industry sector is the tourism and hospitality industry. Despite the concern about quantifying the definition of tourism as an industry, for the purpose of estimating employment it is considered to be one and a half times larger than the next industry. The accommodation sector has continued to exhibit growth over the last few decades, although at various rates, and is forecasted to continue this growth both in development and employment numbers.

Weaver (1988) argued that hotel managers have experimented with various motivational theories and methods to address the problem of declining productivity among their hourly workers. Most of these experiments have had minimal success, because they are based on reward systems that have little meaning for hourly workers.

“If a company knows why its employees come to work on time, stay with the company for their full working lives, and are productive, then it might be able to ensure that all of its employees behave in that way” (Kovach 1987, 58). Such a company would have a competitive advantage over competitors that may be suffering from high absenteeism and turnover, costly re-training programs, and production slowdowns.

Wiley (1997) emphasized that in the case of a lack of ability, appropriate training can be employed. Altering the environment to promote higher performance is the key in the event of environmental problems. However, if motivation is the problem, the solution is more complicated and testing.

For motivational problems, the best source of information would be the employee. Responses by employees regarding what ignites and sustains their desire to work may lead the employer to redesign jobs, increase pay, change the working environment, or give more credit for work done. The key is that managers avoid the assumption that what motivates them, motivates their employees as well.

If hotel managers are able to satisfy their employees by understanding their underlying motivations better, it will play a part in retaining and motivating hotel employees and thus improve customer satisfaction in the long run. (Wong, Siu, and Tsang 1999)

According to Robbins et al. (2008, 180), motivation can be defined as “The processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort towards attaining a goal.” Intensity is concerned with how hard a person tries, and is generally the focus of motivation.

However, high intensity is unlikely to lead to favourable job-performance outcomes unless the effort is channelled in a direction that benefits the organization. Effort should directed towards, and is consistent with, the organization’s goals. Finally, the persistence dimension of motivation is a measure of how long a person can maintain effort. Motivated individuals stay with a task long enough to achieve their goal.

Lee-Ross (2005, 255) elaborates on the significant link between motivation in the workplace and practical organizational-based outcomes such as productivity, commitment, job satisfaction, intent to stay and burnout.

Fundamentally, Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) theory of motivation is concerned with “internal work motivation” whereby a continuous cycle of motivation happens within the employee. In other words, the more effort expended on a job, the more motivated they would become.(Chiang and Jang 2008; Lee-Ross 2005)

While on the job, motivation is important for individuals, and in some theories (e.g. expectancy or equity), researchers predict variations in the evaluations of such outcomes as pay. But the evaluation of pay usually is just one of many outcomes and is frequently measured with little accuracy. (Mitchell and Mickel 1999)

Besides its high labour turnover and labour-intensive nature, the hotel industry is often characterised by low job security, low pay, shift duties and limited opportunities for promotion. The studies of Lee-Ross (1993) added that these characteristics seemed to be more extreme in the seasonal sector. Understanding hotel employees’ attitudes and motivations has therefore become a useful area of research in the industry. (Wong, Siu, and Tsang 1999)

Iverson and Deery (1997, 71) noted that “Turnover culture is best characterised as the acceptance of turnover as part of the workgroup norm.” Alternatively, it is a belief held by employees that turnover behaviour is quite appropriate especially in the hotel industry.

In the hotel industry, employees strongly require intelligence, job knowledge and skills, and time management ability. However, without motivation, an employee will not advance in his or her career. (Wong, Siu, and Tsang 1999)

The amount of effort an employee spends toward accomplishing the hotel’s goals depends on whether the employee believes that this effort will lead to the satisfaction of his or her own needs and desires. When a need or desire is unsatisfied, a person experiences tension that drives him or her to satisfy the need.

People work hard to satisfy their needs and desires, and in this way they reduce their tension. From this straightforward approach to motivating employees, the key to facilitating motivation lies with managers’ accurately understanding what their employees want from their work. Using that knowledge, managers can more effectively channel employee effort toward organizational goals.” (Simons and Enz 1995)

A category of motivational models is based on the assumption that personal growth and achievement is a primary motivating force among employees. These models emphasize on giving one’s best efforts to grow and develop as an individual or to advance within the organization. (Weaver 1988)

This category of motivational theories includes Maslow’s theory of self-actualization and Herzberg’s theory of maintenance factors and motivational factors. Maslow’s theory of self-actualisation has no relevance in the work environment of hourly employees. On the other hand, career-oriented and salaried employees are more likely to be motivated by assurances that the organization will provide opportunities to actualize their full potential. (Weaver 1988)

Herzberg divided working conditions into two sets of factors: maintenance factors and motivational factors. According to Herzberg, company policies, technical supervision, interpersonal relationships, salary and status, job security, working conditions, and personal life are maintenance factors; while advancement, recognition, achievement, possibility for personal growth, responsibility, and the work itself are motivational factors.

Herzberg believes that maintenance factors have no power to motivate workers. Many hotel managers might agree with this argument, since their early years in the industry were probably characterised by unfavourable maintenance factors, yet they continued their career due to the presence of Herzberg’s motivational factors. (Weaver 1988)

Another argument of Herzberg’s two-factor theory, also known as the motivation-hygiene theory, divides need satisfactions into extrinsic and intrinsic factors. The extrinsic factors (e.g. salary, working conditions, and job security) lead to job dissatisfaction if not met, but will not necessarily contribute to job satisfaction when they are met. The intrinsic factors (e.g. work itself, achievement, and recognition) are the actual motivators; they fulfil an individual’s need for psychological growth. The extrinsic factors, on the other hand, merely prevent dissatisfaction. (Kovach 1987)

However, the conditions of employment Herzberg views as motivational factors do not apply to the work of hourly employees. (Weaver 1988)

Weaver (1988, 41) stated that “Other models attempt to motivate employees by using psychological rewards or punishment or try to increase employees’ commitment and productivity by generating a sense of team or family spirit within the organization.”

These models may backfire instead since the overuse of threats or reprimands may serve as a strong force against motivation. “Hostile and distrusting supervisors can dramatically shape employees’ working conditions, and, for many employees, can diminish motivation levels,” argued Simons and Enz (1995, 23).

McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y and Ouchi’s Theory Z describe motivational approaches managers have employed specifically to motivate hourly employees. (Weaver 1988)

Theory X operates in the assumption that employees are lazy and have a strong dislike for work. Managers who subscribe to this view believe that employees will not be productive unless they are continually prodded and are punished by disciplinary action or the threat of dismissal for low productivity.

Theory Y is based on the assumption that an employee’s presence at the workplace indicates that he or she is willing to work. Proponents of Theory Y believe that guidance and positive feedback are sufficient to motivate hourly workers to work well. In recent years, many hotel chains have made a conscious change from Theory X to Theory Y management. A change from Theory X management to Theory Y management will generally show positive results, since people respond better to encouragement and compliments than to prodding and punishment. However, workers will not always be willing to put out 100 percent effort just because their supervisor is nice to them.

In addition to that, Theory Z is based on the Japanese management model, which focuses on a strong company philosophy and a distinct corporate culture. Companies that develop a motivational model based on Theory Z try to convince employees that they are part of a team or family. Some hotels are instituting such motivational programs.

Interestingly, Weaver (1988) found that hotel employees are often more cynical than employees in most other industries, perhaps because they work in an environment where they see how people really behave when they are away from home. Hourly employees in the hotel industry are fully aware of what their interest are and are not easily motivated by programs that they perceive as being nothing but hot air.

Lee-Ross (2005, 256-7) stated that “As long as an individual’s job contains sufficient “content” variables such as skill variety and challenge, an outcome of high motivation and subsequent job satisfaction will result. He also argued that “the other “process” school contends that these outcomes depend not only on content variables, but also on how workers evaluate the pros and cons of undertaking a job.”

Motivation factors including pay, monetary rewards, opportunity for advancement and promotion have been examined in the hotel industry. Also, other motivation factors such as job responsibility, recognition from people, job challenge, feelings of accomplishment, and development of self-esteem have been identified important for hotel employees.(Chiang and Jang 2008; Wong, Siu, and Tsang 1999)

The importance of intrinsic and extrinsic work motivation for hotel employees also varies due to their intensive labour work, low pay, image of low status and few opportunities for advancement (Chiang and Jang 2008). In moving across cultures, motivational preferences become even more interesting. The preferences of employees are expected to differ across nations and cultures. (Fisher and Yuan 1998)

It is valuable to know exactly what employees value, and whether subgroups of employees have differing preferences, so that reward systems can be appropriately targeted. Often, superiors misperceive the relative importance of various job characteristics for their employees. “To the extent that they do (misperceive), they may adopt less than optimal motivation strategies because they misunderstand employees’ needs and wants.” (Fisher and Yuan 1998, 517)

The lack of attachment or loyalty plays a large part in the high rate of turnover among hourly employees. It also accounts for the lack of success of motivational efforts based on company loyalty or the promise of career advancement and personal growth within a company. (Weaver 1988)

In 1946, industrial employees were asked to rank ten “job reward” factors in terms of personal preference. The results were as follows: (Kovach 1987, 59)

Full appreciation of work done;
Feelings of being in on things;
Sympathetic help with personal problems;
Job security;
Good wages;
Interesting work;
Promotion and growth in the organization;
Personal loyalty to employees;
Good working conditions; and
Tactful discipline.

By 1986, the list looked like this:

Interesting work;
Full appreciation of work done;
Feeling of being in on things;
Job security;
Good wages;
Promotion and growth in the organization;
Good working conditions;
Personal loyalty to employees;
Tactful discipline; and
Sympathetic help with personal problems.

In addition to comparing the employees’ factor rankings, the survey done in 1986 analysed the employees’ responses by subgroups (e.g. age and income). The underlying assumption was that the motivational effectiveness of the factors might vary according to gender, age, income level, job type and/or organizational level. (Kovach 1987)

The 40 years of studies done by Kovach shaped the belief held by many motivational programs that money does not matter. (Simons and Enz 1995)

In addition to that, in 1946 and 1986, supervisors were asked to rank job rewards as they believed employees would rank them. Their rankings remained almost the same for each year: (Kovach 1987, 59)

Good wages;
Job security;
Promotion and growth in the organization;
Good working conditions;
Interesting work;
Personal loyalty to employees;
Tactful discipline;
Full appreciation of work done;
Sympathetic help with personal problems; and
Feeling of being in on things.

The rankings show that supervisors have a very inaccurate perception of what motivates employees.

However, in 1992, the replication done by Wiley (1997, 268) in hotel employees showed a completely different set of rankings:

Good wages;
Full appreciation of work done;
Job security;
Promotion and growth in the organization;
Interesting work;
Personal loyalty to employees;
Good working conditions;
Tactful discipline;
Feeling of being in on things; and
Sympathetic help with personal problems.

This could be due to the fact that hotel workers differed substantially from industrial workers. This difference in rankings indicates the need for different managerial strategies for motivating hotel workers, relative to those used for industrial workers. Hotel employees ranked good wages first, which may be a result of the relatively low wages of service-sector jobs. (Simons and Enz 1995)

A research done by Charles and Marshall (1992) showed that Caribbean hotel workers may not have the same motivational preferences as workers in developed countries. Whereas wages have not been found to be an important motivator in similar research conducted in developed countries, they were ranked highest among this group of Caribbean workers.

Proper motivation of employees is vital as it is directly related with productivity and retention. Employees who are content with their jobs, who feel challenged, and who have the opportunity to fulfil their goals will exhibit less destructive behaviour on the job. They will be absent less frequently, they will be less inclined to change jobs, and, most importantly, they will produce at a higher level. (Kovach 1987)

Considering the evident relationship between employee and customer satisfaction, different approaches were experimented in the attempt to improve employee satisfaction. “Predictably, the list was led by compensation, although most anticipate this will become less important in the future. Employee recognition programs, the opportunity for career advancement and exposure to training followed in order of impact.” (Cline 1997, 24)

The concept that employees may prefer interesting work over good wages is interesting, but the early studies were based on workers in manufacturing industries. It seems very likely that hospitality workers’ preferences would differ from those of manufacturing workers in important ways (Simons and Enz 1995) as it has been shown in the research done by Wiley in 1997.

When trying to motivate workers, managers often forget that the desire to do the job must come from within the employee and not from the supervisor. The manager can set the stage for motivation to happen, but cannot force motivation to occur. The level of effort and the direction of that effort are set by workers, based on their perceptions of the most rational way to satisfy their personal desires.

What managers can do is to take employee desires into account to create an environment where high effort, properly channelled, will give employees some measure of satisfaction. For many hospitality employees, this optimum motivational environment may involve some form of cash incentive and potential for advancement. For others, it will focus on security and good working conditions. In most cases, a positive, respectful work environment has the potential to facilitate employee retention and generally also to set the stage for excellent performance. (Simons and Enz 1995)

An interesting point of view by Siu, Tsang, and Wong (1997) explains that job factors that are considered by employees to have the greatest motivating power are usually those that are least present in the job.

The ever-changing nature of the hospitality industry has created and reinforced a turnover culture. Employees generally enter the industry with the belief that there is limited career development and promotional opportunity. (Iverson and Deery 1997)

Essentially, the human element in the hotel industry constitutes the basic determining factor for effective performance. Because of this reason, hotel management should increase employees’ interest in their work and develop such organizational structure and management policies as to create need-satisfying environment in which a wider range of employee needs than merely the simply hygiene needs could be satisfied. (Chitiris 1988)

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